criterionforum.org

The Frederick Wiseman library has been added to Kanopy.

[... with captioning, which I wasn't expecting!]

dda1996a wrote:$40 for one Blu is nuts imo

Well, the good news I can report is that the Ex Libris BD-R does play in both of my players (Seiki blu & Sony UHD), which is an improvement from the La Danse BD-R that played in absolutely nothing.

Wiseman’s latest, Ex Libris, about the New York Public Library, is currently available to watch free on the PBS website and app. Will probably be available only for a week or two.

The website says until Oct. 2.

Odd that the Zipporah website has not been updated to acknowledge the existence of Monrovia, Indiana or any of its high-profile festival screenings.

Werewolf by Night wrote: Thu Sep 06, 2018 11:47 pm Wiseman’s latest, Ex Libris, about the New York Public Library, is currently available to watch free on the PBS website and app. Will probably be available only for a week or two.

Great movie, of course, but so much of it is dedicated to the most annoying people imaginable. I wish it had less of the people giving talks which only worked a couple of times and more emphasis placed on the employees or the disparity between the different branches. That later quality especially really made the film into a powerful and engaging look into now.

The trailer for Monrovia, Indiana

Keith Uhlich on the film on the Cinephiliacs Best of 2018 podcast (his number 9 at 27:04)

Very surprised there is not a Frederick Wiseman topic in the Filmmakers forum here.

Figured I would share the news that PBS is streaming Monrovia, Indiana until the end of the month.

Should be here..
https://www.pbs.org/video/monrovia-indiana-y8ci0n/

Ultimately, I would not place this in his best works but it still has it's moments and shows much worth thinking and discussing over.

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I'm using some of this free time to finally go through those longer Wiseman films which has lead me to Domestic Violence, a film that may very well be Wiseman's best. The powerful subject matter aids in that, but how Wiseman has the story conform to his linear narrative structure is illuminating on him as well as exploding the implications of the situation. Obviously one is going to be hyper aware in any story surrounding domestic violence, but Wiseman seems to be actively using that to his advantage. Just taking a look at the first act of the film the story opens with men overpowering a woman. Our first human image is of three men, a batterer and two cops, talking in a sequence that lasts about six minutes before finally seeing one of the women of the title who herself goes into conversation with the police for a few minutes. We have one short confrontation between the abuser and abused before the figure of abuser becomes an unseen menace for the rest of the picture. Beyond the police we only get one other man from here on during the outside portion of the film.

Suddenly Wiseman places us inside (before he had been focusing on exterior locations even while inside) and we turn to a world of women. Women helping women; talking to them and guiding them. It's a powerful wash because though we are with the women wholly the spectre of men is on the tongues constantly. This extensive sequence is where the gender relations really announces itself and its use. We don't see another man in the film until the end of the act with some managerial type signing off on the paperwork to allow a woman to enter into a domestic violence shelter. Though this scene is small it's a very important moment for the film since it undermines the gendered language the film has been using so far and it begins to change preconceived notions of what domestic violence is. From there we enter the shelter, but not before a transitional scene which highlights what I mean. A woman guides us with some much needed exposition on domestic violence and she directly addresses the gender question by discussing men who have been abused and women going through abusers therapy. So Wiseman brings up these ideas every now and then ("castration doesn't end abuse") in the most compelling use of direct cinema I've ever seen.

Nice thoughts- this is my favorite Wiseman as well, mostly due to the facilitated group around the middle which is perhaps the best and most effecting presentation of the simultaneous unity and isolation under the umbrella of commonality in the group process that I've seen captured on screen, and probably the second best fly-on-the-wall doc exhibition of the group process in general next to The Color of Fear, which for my money will never be topped as the best exploration of the layers of racism and perspective-sharing initiating or prohibiting change based on the clash of self-concept and privilege, despite sadly not being readily available or seen by anyone I know outside of my grad program.

That doc sounds amazing and hopefully it will come to light some day.

Perhaps this is too much of a peak behind the curtains, but when I was a kid I lived in a very similar shelter for two months in central PA just three years before this was shot and that sense of veracity to my experience probably also aided in my satisfaction with the film. Scenes like the women chatting about the different types of domestic violence are powerful because not only is it genuinely informative as an audience member, but those sorts of conversations with kids running around do happen all the time. The scene with the little girl being interviewed is probably the highlight for me in part because she's so adorable, but also because it took no imagination to place my sisters into that situation.

Yeah that sounds intimately personal, and for me the groups especially focusing on that desperate and acute struggle with powerlessness were personal for very different reasons.

And oh my god I found it on Vimeo (I think this is uncut): The Color of Fear It's always been so hard to track down, hopefully you get something out of it. Not sure if there's a better thread for discussion of this if it sparks any conversation, but it's definitely not here!

That's amazing. I'll definitely try to get to it sometime soon.

FYI, City Hall will be broadcast on PBS on December 22. Presumably it will stream on PBS's website for a limited time after that, though as always it will be edited to fit the broadcast time slot.

Is the version currently streaming on PBS (4'34'') uncut? I see in several places elsewhere it listed as 272 minutes which is nearly twenty more.

That's the listing on the Coolidge Corner website, where you can pay for a virtual screening if you want. Ty Burr loved it and said Marty Walsh, mayor of Boston, is the closest Wiseman has come to giving us a protagonist to root behind, which is very intriguing for personal and artistic reasons.

It's four and a half hours, and it's fantastic, though maybe not the place to start for those who may be new to Wiseman.

knives wrote: Mon Dec 28, 2020 8:38 pm Is the version currently streaming on PBS (4'34'') uncut? I see in several places elsewhere it listed as 272 minutes which is nearly twenty more.

I would recheck that math - 4h32m is 272, so they’re in all likelihood the same

If the board needed more proof of my idiocy.

Tonight, Metrograph's 6:50 pm EST virtual cinema screening of City Hall will be followed by a moderated Q&A with Frederick Wiseman.

FWIW, MoMA will also screen the film in its virtual cinema starting January 28. (Open to MoMA members only.)

City Hall is now available to purchase on DVD and Blu Ray from Zipporah Films:

http://www.zipporah.com/films/49

And Boston mayor Marty Walsh has been sworn in as the new Secretary of Labor - I never heard of him until I saw City Hall, so when I saw the news, I was like "Hey! It's that guy from the movie!"

hearthesilence wrote: Wed Mar 24, 2021 1:24 am And Boston mayor Marty Walsh has been sworn in as the new Secretary of Labor - I never heard of him until I saw City Hall, so when I saw the news, I was like "Hey! It's that guy from the movie!"

As a Boston resident I've had the opposite experience in the wake of City Hall, finding it odd to think about people from other parts of the country or the world watching this film about public figures and locations that are so familiar to me as to be banal. Even crazier now that Marty Walsh has taken a cabinet position and will receive a whole new level of visibility.

Frederick Wiseman, according to the NYT: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/16/mov ... ky-nytimes