Strangechord

All this weekend I have to write a paper for Film & Social Justice class. I decided to focus on the films of Frederick Wiseman, an independent documentary director who for over thirty years has been turning the camera loose inside many of America’s most distinctive institutions. His films have no narration, no scripts and use handheld camera. The genius of the films is in the editing (Wiseman edits them himself). Yesterday I watched Welfare and Law and Order and I had previously watched High School, which is included in the National Film Registry.

I found a quote that I’m using as the backbone of my thesis: “In discussions of his documentaries, Wiseman has often mentioned his recurrent concern with ‘the gap between ideology and actual practice, between the rules and the way they are applied.’”