"Wiseman is best known for first film, 1967's "Titicut Follies," a harrowing look at the inhumane treatment of the criminally insane. After the controversial debut, there were no mainstream breakthroughs or Oscar nominations (though he did receive an honorary Oscar in 2016). There is no well-accepted canon or top 5 from his catalogue of 40+ feature films. Yet each of Wiseman's films stands an ambitious cinematic achievement and, as a whole, his oeuvre serves as an invaluable anthropological study of institutional function."
""I systematically wanted to select as subjects institutions that are important in the functioning of American society," said Wiseman in a career retrospective interview with IndieWire on the anniversary of his 50th year as filmmaker in 2017. "Every society has schools, hospitals, prisons, some form of welfare, some form of the arts, so on one hand it was a way of looking at contemporary American life through institutions that are important and by implication have their counterparts elsewher"
Frederick Wiseman made groundbreaking documentary portraits of social institutions for over fifty years and died at 96. He produced more than forty feature films and remained prolific and acclaimed well past age eighty. His recent films — Monrovia, Indiana; Ex Libris; In Jackson Heights; National Gallery; and At Berkeley — received near-universal critical praise and matched the complexity and sharpness of his early work. He is best known for 1967's Titicut Follies, a harrowing depiction of inhumane treatment of the criminally insane. Wiseman's oeuvre functions as an anthropological study of institutional function. He systematically selected institutions central to American life, including schools, hospitals, prisons, welfare and arts.
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