Frederick Wiseman

What does an American institution look like on an ordinary working day? Wiseman has spent more than fifty years answering with a camera and no narrator: the emergency ward in Hospital, a juvenile court in Memphis, a welfare office, the New York Public Library, Boston's city government in City Hall. Nobody explains anything to the audience. You sit in the room long enough to learn how the place works, and who it works for.

Signature

• No narration, interviews, captions or added music.
• Long films assembled from long scenes, with the argument made in the edit.
• Public institutions as the recurring subject: police, schools, public housing, the army.
• Later films about art and craft, from the Paris Opera Ballet to the Troisgros kitchen.