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Retrospective Frederick Wiseman Biography Frederick Wiseman (1930) Having traced a unique course for North American documentaries, Frederick Wiseman has often been defined as "the best and most courageous observer of the sinister side of contemporary society." With a Law degree from Yale, he began his cinematography career by producing "The Cool World", by Shirley Clarke, in 1963, which is a semi-documentary look at juvenile delinquency in Harlem. His directing debut, with "Titicut Follies" - shot in a prison for the mentally insane - began to establish his reputation for polemics. The film was banished in the United States from 1967 to 1992. Over the past 33 years, Wiseman has built a vast work dedicated mainly to exploring America's great institutions, portraying schools, hospitals, police departments, military academies, monasteries, courts of justice, scientific research centers, and the welfare system, and always exposing, in the purest style of the cinema verité, the inhuman effects of bureaucracy. His approach reveals the more terrifying facet of a society that is presumably equalitarian and democratic. In some cases, Wiseman turns his camera on more restricted realities - the fashion world, a ski resort, a public park, a theater company, or a small fishing village. In the '80s, he focused on portraying the psychological effects of physical handicaps on those who have them, in works like "Blind" and "Deaf". This retrospective includes eight works, divided into nine programs, among which are his first film and "Belfast, Maine", his latest production.