Fred Wiseman at the Brattle Theater with Hospital, July 19, 2010

Abstract

This interview is an edited version of a public discussion with filmmaker Fred Wiseman at the Brattle Theater in Cambridge, Massachusetts, about his film, Hospital (1970). Wiseman discusses his filmmaking approach and his belief that shooting film footage is research, while the actual filmmaking is done in the editing. During the shooting of each of his features, Wiseman takes sound and directs his cinematographers. In his editing, he is more interested in presenting an experience of the places he films than in developing particular socio-political arguments. Wiseman has been remarkably prolific, making at least one feature film a year since Titicut Follies (1967). He is understood as the epitome of “fly-on-the-wall” observational cinema-verite documentary and has used his approach to explore a considerable panorama of American institutions—“institutions” in the broadest sense. Hospital remains among the most engaging of his films.