Frederick Wiseman's Films

 doc·u·men·ta·ry
noun: documentary; plural noun: documentaries
    a movie or a television or radio program that provides a factual record or report.

A documentary film is a un biased non-fictional motion-picture intended to "document reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction, education, or maintaining a historical record”. Reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Documentary_film
 

Frederick Wiseman’s name can be put against the definition of documentary because his films have documented places, people, cities, organizations, institutions, communities and buildings. He is highly prolific and has directed almost one film per year since his debut documentary in 1967 (Titicut Follies). The recent City Hall (2020) is his 45th feature documentary. However, for the longest time, it was hard for me to see his films in the same year as it was released. This is because his films were released at select film festivals and their length of 3-4 hours ensured that they never made it to my local city. In the years between 2005-2013, the gap between his film getting released and my time to see it got reduced to 2-3 years. Then in 2014, I finally saw a Frederick Wiseman movie in a cinema (National Gallery) in the same year of its release. That good fortune continued in 2015 when I saw In Jackson Heights a few months after its release. Finally, this year’s City Hall (released on PBS Dec 22) is the 3rd Wiseman film I have seen in the same year as its release. On top of that, his films are now more accessible than ever. Since 2018, all his films are  available to stream via Kanopy, which means anyone with a library card (at least in North America) can see his movies.

I planned a mini-spotlight which included re-viewing Titicut Follies after more than a decade and seeing a few other films for the first time. The goal was to finish viewing all films in time for premiere of City Hall on Dec 22.

Titicut Follies (1967)
Welfare (1975)
Canal Zone (1977)
Public Housing (1997)
Belfast, Maine (1999)
City Hall (2020)
 

Of the above films, Welfare is a remarkable film that left me in awe. The film came out in 1975 and shows the challenges in trying to judge/handle individual welfare cases. The problems related to housing, unemployment, welfare have gotten much worse since the film came out as the gap between rich and poor has widened in the last 45 years. On top of that, the topic of welfare has been heavily politicized in America with politicians and certain media outlets dehumanizing those on welfare over the last few decades. The welfare system is shown be struggling to handle all the cases in 1975. It is hard to image how this system has coped in 2020 and will cope in 2021 with more job losses and a government that isn’t interested in helping address the core issues of poverty. The political parties and their media mouthpieces are not interesting in providing any solutions related to retraining people who have lost their jobs or how to diversify jobs.

There is a hint of a solution to some job creation provided at the end of Public Housing  (1997) which contains ideas on how residents can form their own businesses to generate some wealth. It is not clear how much such ideas made a difference or if they gained traction because one of the stats mentioned in City Hall (2020) shows that the average wealth of African Americans is substantially behind those of White Americans. This disparity is related to other minorities as well. In City Hall, a hispanic contractor mentions his plight in trying to win big contracts and not getting anywhere over 30 years. He says that there is clearly a disparity in how city council awards its contracts to companies but the film shows discussions and ideas on how to make things better.

The films of Frederick Wiseman shed light on relevant topics of economic disparity but are these films seen by anyone who is in the power to mount a change? Are these films merely meant to be praised by those on the left but they lead to no policy or political change? The protests in the aftermath of George Floyd’s killing raised topics of systematic racist policies that have existed for decades and some of these policies are indirectly reflected in Wiseman’s films but only the recent City Hall shows a mayor with some words about making a relevant change.

It isn’t only economic disparity that has gotten worse in America but racism has gotten worse in the last few decades. In Welfare, a racist man speaks his mind to a black security officer. The racist is shown to be an isolated individual in the context of the film because everyone else in the film is shown to treat the welfare cases with some degree of patience and compassion. However, the words spoken by that racist have sadly now become part of the mainstream American landscape in 2020.

Location, Location

The films of Frederick Wiseman certainly help to give a sense of life in a community. Even though sometimes we only see a subset of a community, we can still get a feel for how people go about their daily jobs, their routines, their struggles and beliefs. Sometimes, the omissions tells a story in itself. One reason I wanted to see Canal Zone was to see how the way of life would be shown and what amount of history would be covered. The day-to-day canal operations related to the Panama canal locks and logistics around ships are fascinating but none of Panama’s history is shown. Instead, what we get is a very American way of life as the film mostly shows Americans involved in running the canal and going about their lives in exile. This shouldn’t be a surprise as the  film came out in 1977 and the US was still in control of the Canal. Hence, the overly American perspective devoid of the history of how the Canal came to be and the US’s involvement in Panama’s history.

After years of negotiations for a new Panama Canal treaty, agreement was reached between the United States and Panama in 1977. Signed on September 7, 1977, the treaty recognized Panama as the territorial sovereign in the Canal Zone but gave the United States the right to continue operating the canal until December 31, 1999. Despite considerable opposition in the U.S. Senate, the treaty was approved by a one-vote margin in September 1978. It went into effect in October 1979, and the canal came under the control of the Panama Canal Commission, an agency of five Americans and four Panamanians. Reference: https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/panama-to-control-canal

Reality fiction/Cinema vérité/Direct Cinema/Actuality

A few locations in Wiseman’s films made me think of Allan King. Wiseman’s Titicut Follies set in Massachusetts Correctional Institution came out in 1967, the same year as Allan King’s Warrendale set in Toronto’s Warrendale mental treatment facility. Wiseman’s Near Death (1989) is set at Beth Israel Hospital in Boston and looks at staff providing care to those in their final moments, an aspect covered in King’s Dying at Grace (2003) which looks at terminally ill cancer patients at Toronto Grace Health Centre.

As it turns out, the overlap in location and topic is only on the surface. It is clear after watching the films, there is a different method at work in Wiseman’s films compared to Allan King. When it comes to Allan King’s films, they can be called ‘Direct Cinema’ or ‘Actuality films’ (as per the Criterion Eclipse Series 24: The Actuality Dramas of Allan King).

By definition:

The actuality film is a non-fiction film genre that, like the documentary film, uses footage of real events, places, and things, yet unlike the documentary is not structured into a larger argument, picture of the phenomenon or coherent whole. Reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actuality_film

The above doesn’t apply to Frederick Wiseman’s films which indeed are structured “into a larger argument”. Instead, Wiseman called his film “reality fictions”.

He has called his work “reality fiction,” an acknowledgement that even nonfiction is usually a narrative form and that narrative is one person’s method of storytelling.

In an early interview for the American Bar Association, Wiseman explained his method. “There’s no such thing as an ‘objective’ film. I try to make a fair film. By that I mean that the final film is in a sense a report on what I saw and felt in the course of the shooting and editing.” Many hours of footage are edited down to a few hours of final film that is, he says, “subjective, impressionistic, and compressed.” Reference: https://daily.jstor.org/frederick-wiseman-realty-fictions/

He never liked the term ‘cinema vérité’:

Frederick Wiseman never liked the term cinema vérité — it is “just a pompous French term that has absolutely no meaning as far as I’m concerned,” he once said — but his kind of non-fiction filmmaking is a case study in the philosophy and practice of its ideals. Reference: https://www.pbs.org/independentlens/blog/cinema-verite-the-movement-of-truth/

The editing and selection of interviews, subjects, locations indeed add up to a picture that Wiseman intends to show.

Useful reading:

1. Mark Binelli recently in NY Times:

“The fact that Wiseman’s half-century-long project is a series of cinéma-vérité documentaries about American institutions, their titles often reading like generic brand labels — “High School,” “Hospital,” “The Store,” “Public Housing,” “State Legislature” — makes its achievement all the more remarkable but also easier to overlook. Beginning with “Titicut Follies” (1967), a portrait of a Massachusetts asylum for the criminally insane that remains shocking to this day, Wiseman has directed nearly a picture a year, spending weeks, sometimes months, embedded in a strictly demarcated space — a welfare office in Lower Manhattan, a sleepy fishing village in Maine, the Yerkes Primate Research Center at Emory University, the flagship Neiman Marcus department store in Dallas, the New York Public Library, a shelter for victims of domestic violence in Tampa, Fla., a Miami zoo — then editing the upward of a hundred hours of footage he brings home into an idiosyncratic record of what he witnessed. Taken as a whole, the films present an unrivaled survey of how systems operate in our country, with care paid to every line of the organizational chart.” Mark Binelli, NY Times 

2. A.O. Scott and Manohla Dargis, NY Times, 2017

“One of the most important and original filmmakers working today, Frederick Wiseman has been making documentaries for 50 years. His movies are about specific places — institutions, organizations, cities and communities: the New York neighborhood of Jackson Heights; the coastal town of Belfast, Me.; the Alabama Institute for the Deaf and Blind; American Ballet Theater; the National Gallery in London. What interests Mr. Wiseman is how these institutions reflect the larger society and what they reveal about human behavior.” A.O. Scott and Manohla Dargis (2017)

3. Ben Kingsberg NY Times 

4. Michael Ewins, BFI, 10 Essential Films 

5. Louis Menand on City Hall

Thou Shalt Not Kill and Collective

Thou Shalt Not Kill (2018, Romania, Catalin Rotaru, Gabi Virginia Sarga)
Collective (2019, Romania/Luxembourg, Alexander Nanau)

One of the earliest films associated with the Romanian New Wave was set in a hospital: The Death of Mr. Lazarescu (2005). 

Critics labeled it a dark comedy but I viewed it as a bloodless horror film. The hospital is again the site of horror, this time far more chilling, in 2018’s Thou Shalt Not Kill. The film is inspired by true events and makes one question what goes on in any hospital around the world (disclosure: I programmed Thou Shalt Not Kill for a film festival back in 2019). 

The Death of Mr. Lazarescu and Thou Shalt Not Kill show the dangers of a hospital from two differing perspectives: a patient waiting to be helped in The Death of Mr. Lazarescu, a doctor trying to save patients in Thou Shalt Not Kill. Both characters appear to be doomed and helpless in a corrupt bureaucratic system. 

An overarching view of that corrupt system is covered by the documentary Collective.

Thou Shalt Not Kill and Collective overlap on the lack of proper disinfectants in the hospital. These two films show that hospitals, which should be safe places for its patients, end up causing far more danger to patients than their initial injuries. One aspect of the corrupt system around big pharmaceutical companies is shown in Thou Shalt Not Kill but the full investigative picture is given in Collective which highlights the links between media, big pharma, political parties and hospitals.

All these three films are set in Romania but their scope extends to all nations, regardless of whether they use public or private healthcare. The topics raised by Thou Shalt Not Kill and Collective are more relevant in 2020 and going forward because all of us around the world are more aware of what epidemiology is and what the role of disinfectants are in keeping people safe.

The Films of Khavn De La Cruz

The camera zips around a small room, then down the stairs, looks around the surroundings and then rises above the building to give a view of the neighbourhood. From the street view to the sky, then back down before settling for a long ride inside a van. The film is Khavn’s Bamboo Dogs (2018) and the van is different from that shown in Brillante Mendoza’s Kinatay yet the air is sinister, not murderous but it feels ominous. What follows is a potent mix of corruption and crime all depicted in cool lighting, a stylish flourish that also lights up Khavn’s earlier film Ruined Heart (2014), shot by master cinematographer Christopher Doyle. 

The lovely cool colours of these two films contrast the black and white images that populate Khavn’s other films. In fact, he isn’t afraid of depicting the ugliness of the world around him, a world where violence is abundant but that violence is cyclical and follows a long history dating back to the barbaric colonial times. This aspect is illustrated by Balangiga: Howling Wilderness which is based on a historical incident involving a colonial massacre.

In just a few films, it is clear that Khavn has his own unique style, one where music plays a key part and that is because Khavn composes the music for a lot of his own films. In fact, it was the music Khavn worked on another director’s film that first drew my attention to him. Khavn worked on the music for John Torres’ award-winning Todo Todo Teros (2006). Torres’ film opened a new path for my journey into the new Philippine cinema that was making the rounds at film festivals during the 2006-2010 time period. During these few years, I sought out as many Filipino films as I could at film festivals and some finds included Jeffrey Jeturian’s brilliant The Bet Collector (2006), Brillante Mendoza’s Tirador and Foster Child (2007), Lav Diaz’s Death in the Land of Encantos (2007), Adolfo Alix Jr.’s Adela (2008), Raya Martin’s Independencia, in addition to Khavn’s Squatterpunk (2007).

Over the last decade, I focused more on the works of Lav Diaz and Mendoza while stopped following the works of Khavn.  As it turns out, Khavn has been incredibly prolific over the last decade and has directed more than a dozen features (fiction and documentaries). A correction was in order so a mini-spotlight of the following features:

Bamboo Dogs (2018)
Balangiga: Howling Wilderness (2017)
Alipato: The Very Brief Life of an Ember (2016)
Ruined Heart (2014)

The availability of digital cameras played a key part in the production of the Filipino movies I encountered in the 2006-2010 time period as the digital medium allowed new directors to make films on a shoe-string budget and get their voices out. A point highlighted by John Torres when he won the VIFF Dragons and Tigers Award for Todo Todo Teros in 2006. When Torres was given his cheque for $5000, he remarked that money would enable him to make 10 more movies! The rise of digital cameras also played a key part in the evolution of Khavn’s cinema, an aspect on display in his “Digital Dekalogo” manifesto where he writes:

“But technology has freed us. Digital film, with its qualities of mobility, flexibility, intimacy, and accessibility, is the apt medium for a Third World Country like the Philippines. Ironically, the digital revolution has reduced the emphasis on technology and has reasserted the centrality of the filmmaker, the importance of the human condition over visual junk food.”

When discussing films that show the harsh lives of ordinary Philippine people, I often end up drawing lines back to the works of Lino Brocka. This real or imaginary line to Brocka’s films can be drawn from the works of Lav Diaz and Brilliante Mendoza. I can now drawn this line to Brocka from Khavn’s films. In addition, Khavn’s films overlap with some aspects of Lav Diaz and Raya Martin’s works (Independencia) in their depiction of colonialism’s brutal aspects while having shades of Mendoza's works in highlighting corruption and poverty. However, these references form just a subset of Khavn’s entire arsenal of filmmaking. Ruined Heart is a perfect example of his divergence from other Filipino directors. The film is an immersive musical journey where hardly any dialogue is spoken. The few words that are heard are akin to poetry. 

A love story against the backdrop of a criminal world is depicted in a musical video format. The baggage of dialogue isn’t required because cinema has long fed us enough to know what is happening. Instead, we can get lost in a world of dazzling images and pulsating music. This world is a complete contrast to that of his other films and illustrates that Khavn has a lot of creative variety to offer. This is again emphasized with his 2020 film, Orphea, co-directed with Alexander Kluge. 

Khavn's films won’t be found on the regular streaming options heavily used in 2020 but thankfully, there is a place to view his films legally:

Khavn De La Cruz films on vimeo demand.