PRESS RELEASE

Contact:
Joanna Topor MacKenzie
Associate Director, CIDF
joanna.topor@gmail.com

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Chicago International Documentary Festival announces
Frederick Wiseman as Lifetime Achievement Award Recipient

Opening Night Gala – Friday March 30, 2007 at 8:00 pm.

Chicago, IL - The Chicago International Documentary Festival (CIDF) will honor acclaimed documentary filmmaker Frederick Wiseman with the Lifetime Achievement Award during the Opening Night Gala of the festival, to be held Friday March 30th, 2007. The Opening Reception will be held at the Society for Arts (1112 N. Milwaukee Ave.) from 5:30 to 7:30 pm. From there guests will be offered charter buses to the Pritzker Auditorium located in the Harold Washington Library Center (400 S. State St.; 401 Plymouth Ct. entrance) where the award ceremony will take place. Mr. Wiseman will be in attendance. The festival will also feature a career retrospective program comprised of eight of Mr. Wiseman’s films.

Mr. Wiseman is one of today’s greatest living documentary filmmakers. For thirty years he has created an exceptional body of work consisting of over thirty-five full length films devoted primarily to exploring a vast expanse of American institutions. From the Ida B. Wells public housing development in Chicago to the American Ballet Theatre, Mr. Wiseman has investigated all aspects of American life.

Born in 1930 in Boston Massachusetts, Mr. Wiseman initially studied law at Yale University. A member of the Massachusetts Bar, Mr. Wiseman was a Lecturer-in-Law at Boston University and a Research Associate in the Department of Sociology at Brandeis University before becoming a filmmaker. Mr. Wiseman started his career by producing a fiction feature film about Harlem teenagers, The Cool World (1963), adapted from the novel by Warren Miller and directed by New York filmmaker Shirley Clarke.

In 1967 Mr. Wiseman made his debut as a documentary filmmaker with Titicut Follies, an expose that chronicled the various ways the inmates at the State Prison for the Criminally Insane at Bridgewater, Massachusetts are treated by guards, social workers and psychiatrists. Titicut Follies introduced audiences to Mr. Wiseman’s unobtrusive and objective approach to filmmaking, referred to by some as “observational mode” – where subjects are not interviewed, identified or asked to interact with the camera. Instead the camera acts as a fly-on-the-wall observer, using its seemingly clandestine nature to observe all aspects of the world around it.

Due to its revealing nature, Titicut Follies became mired in lengthy litigation with state authorities, and the ensuing controversy resulted in Mr. Wiseman garnering the inaccurate reputation as a muckraker. Though Mr. Wiseman has gone on to examine the ins and outs of hospitals, high schools, army basic training, a welfare center and a police precinct, his films have also been concerned with the institution of American culture. And though his initial films did seem to be motivated by a desire for social change, recent films lack an ardent activist drive and instead are about the film experience itself, about finding narrative themes and exploring symbolic potential in the everyday through editing. They are also longer. Mr. Wiseman’s recent films can run into the 3 and 4 hour mark, a drastic increase from the 84 minute running time of Titicut Follies.

In 1971 Mr. Wiseman founded a distribution company, Zipporah Films. Though his works have been shown on PBS, Zipporah Films is committed to preserving, promoting and funding Mr. Wiseman’s body of work through rentals, screenings and lectures.

His 1970 film Hospital, which depicts the daily activities of the Metropolitan Hospital in New York City, with emphasis on the emergency ward and outpatient clinic, went on to win numerous Emmy Awards. In 1992 he filmed High School II, where, in the midst of the Rodney King trial and Los Angeles riots, Mr. Wiseman turned his camera on Central Park East Secondary School (CPESS), a uniquely successful alternative high school in New York’s Spanish Harlem, setting the stage for frank, illuminating and engrossing conversations about race, gender, discipline and sex education.

In Ballet (1993) and La Comedie Francaise (1996) - the first time a documentary film-maker has been allowed to look at all the aspects of the work of this great theatrical company in Paris – Mr. Wiseman examined the conditions necessary for artistic creation: how to create circumstances which allow a director, an actor, or a dancer to achieve the goal of a perfect performance; how the specific dialect for the theatre works, the dialect which both places in opposition and transcends the solitude of individual creation and group collaboration.

Though films such as Central Park (1989) and Aspen (1991) Mr. Wiseman not only explored both locations as areas of recreation by showing the daily lives of the people who play and work in the areas, he also examined how both Aspen and Central Park are maintained and operated. While Central Park shows the complex problems that the New York City Parks Department must deal with in order to keep the park open to the public, Aspen depicts the contrast between Old West Values and a frivolously commercial venue.

During his expansive career, Mr. Wiseman has received numerous awards and accolades including the FIPRESCI Prize at the Berlin International Film Festival, the Silver Hugo at the Chicago International Film Festival, the Grand Prix at the Marseille Festival of Documentary Film and a personal Peabody Award.

Mr. Wiseman will be available for phone interviews prior to his arrival in Chicago. To learn more about interview opportunities and screenings please contact Joanna Topor MacKenzie, Associate Director CIDF, at joanna.topor@gmail.com .

Films to be Shown at CIDF
“Throughout his career Frederick Wiseman has dared explore directly the fullest range of human experience. In film after film he has rendered us as we are—the complexities, ambiguities, ironies, inconsistencies, contradictions that inform our life. He is, really, kin to some of our writers of short fiction, anxious to comprehend through a particular angle of vision our contingent lives: the way we are shaped by institutions, certainly, but the way we may stand up to them, take only so much from them, or find our own ways of breaking free of them. His careful, respectful, persistent regard for plain, ordinary people puts him in the company of writers such as Raymond Carver, Richard Ford, Bobbie Ann Mason, Toni Morrison, James McPherson…”
–Robert Coles, The New Republic
The following films by Mr. Wiseman will be screened at the 2007 CIDF

Titicut Follies (1967) – In his eye-opening masterpiece, Frederick Wiseman chronicles the daily activities of the staff and inmates at the State Prison for the Criminally Insane at Bridgewater, Massachusetts. From psychological evaluations, to recreation time and from treatments to impromptu concerts, this evocative films shows with gritty clarity the way in which the inmates are treated by guards, social workers and psychiatrists. 84 minutes

High School II (1994) – This is a film about Central Park East Secondary School (CPESS), a successful alternative high school in New York's Spanish Harlem, 85-95% of whose graduates go on to four-year colleges. The film illustrates the School's emphasis on Habits of Mind (weighing evidence; awareness of multiple points of view; seeing connections and relationships; speculating on possibilities; and assessing values.) Sequences illustrating the School's approach to learning include: classroom activities in the humanities and sciences; family conferences; discussions of race, class, and gender; faculty meetings; disciplinary problems; sex education; conflict resolution by students; and student council meetings. 220 minutes.

Domestic Violence (2001) - Filmed in Tampa, FL, the film shows the police responding to domestic violence calls and the work of The Spring, the principal shelter in Tampa for women and children. Mr. Wiseman follows the Tampa police as they respond to domestic violence disputes, intervene in attacks and attempt to resolve altercations. At the shelter we see interviews, individual counseling sessions, anger management training, group therapy and staff meetings. As two thirds of the residents at the shelter are children, the film pays close attention to school activities, specialized therapy sessions for children where domestic violence is discussed, and counseling for parents and children organized around children's issues and experiences with domestic violence. 196 minutes
Basic Training (1971) - follows a company of draftees and enlisted men through the nine weeks of the basic training cycle. The varieties of training techniques used by the army in converting civilians to soldiers are illustrated in scenes of drills, M-16 and bayonet use, gas chamber, mines, night crawl, infiltration course and the many forms of ideological training familiar to millions of men and women who have served in the armed forces. 89 minutes
Public Housing (1997) – This captivating film documents daily life at the Ida B. Wells public housing development in Chicago. The film examines the issues faced by residents, the tenants' council, and the city, state and federal government in maintaining a public housing complex. Scenes illustrate the problems and solutions of job training programs, nursery-school and after-school teenage programs, encounters with the police, drug use, drug education and counseling, and dysfunctional families. 195 minutes

The Store (1983) – Tells the story of the main Neiman Marcus store and corporate headquarters in Dallas, Texas. By depicting everything from the selection, presentation, marketing, pricing, advertising and selling of vast array of consumer products to the day-to-day demands on the internal management of the company (sales meetings, development of marketing and advertising strategies, training, personnel practices and sales techniques), the film illustrates aspects of both the retail process and inner workings of a successful corporation. 118 minutes

Welfare (1975) - The nature and complexity of the welfare system is examined by sequences illustrating the staggering diversity of problems that constitute welfare: housing, unemployment, divorce, medical and psychiatric problems, abandoned and abused children, and the elderly. These issues are presented in a context where welfare workers, as well as the clients, are struggling to cope with and interpret the laws and regulations that govern their work and life. 167 minutes

Ballet (1995) – Here Mr. Wiseman profiles of the work of an important classical dance company, the American Ballet Theatre. This intimate film follows the company as it goes on tour, first rehearsing in its New York studio and later performing in Athens and Copenhagen. On the one hand Mr. Wiseman shows the creative aspect of the company, where choreographers and ballet masters and mistresses are shown at work with principal dancers, soloists and the corps de ballet, but simultaneously the filmmaker visits the behind the scenes work of the administrative and fund-raising aspects of the company. 170 minutes.

Frederick Wiseman Full Filmography

Titicut Follies, 1967
High School, 1968
Law and Order, 1969
Hospital, 1969
Basic Training, 1971
Essene, 1972
Juvenile Court, 1973
Primate, 1974
Welfare, 1975
Meat, 1976
Canal Zone, 1977
Sinai Field Mission, 1978
Manoeuvre, 1979
Model, 1980
Seraphita's Diary, 1982
The Store, 1983
Racetrack, 1985
Blind, 1986
Deaf, 1986
Adjustment and Work, 1986
Multi-handicapped, 1986
Missile, 1987
Central Park, 1989
Near Death, 1989
Aspen, 1991
Zoo, 1993
High School II, 1994
Ballet, 1995
La Comédie-Française ou L'Amour Joué, 1996
Public Housing, 1997
Belfast, Maine, 1999
Domestic Violence, 2001
Domestic Violence 2, 2002
La Dernière Lettre, 2002
The Garden, 2004
State Legislature, 2006