Music & Sound

Great news for documentary fans

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• Friday 17th August 2007

What’s a documentary film?

Is it a collection of talking heads, each posed at 3/4 view, with a purple keylight and a potted plant, separated from each other by stock footage? Do documentaries have voice-overs pointing out important points you might miss? Are documentaries full of cheap editing ambushes a la Michael Moore?

If you answered “yes” to any of the above questions, there’s good news coming soon to a DVD player near you.

Frederick Wiseman is a documentary filmmaker you probably haven’t heard of, despite the fact that he’s made over 30 full-length, award-winning documentaries.. And when I say documentaries, I’m not talking about the sort of sanitized Ken Burns pablum served up by well-meaning public stations, or the sensationalistic drivel that comes from what’s left of the news organizations at the networks.

Frederick Wiseman makes intelligent documentaries; films that take a lot of effort and time to put together. He’s made films about high school, police departments, models, state institutions for the insane, schools for the disabled, small towns – the list goes on. If I’m not mistaken, he shows up at an institution, and the camera rolls. It rolls for hours and hours and hours and days and weeks. Scenes in Wiseman films can be long; just like real life. Watch a blind kid working his way donwn a set of stairs at an Alabama school for the disabled, and feel every uncertain step.

And no talking heads. No voiceover. People appear in their natural environments, doing their jobs and acting like they always do. These films are deep and strong.

So how come they’re not on Netflix, hey? Because for some damn reason known only to Mr. Wiseman – who owns and runs Zipporah Films, the company that distributes his work – up until now, his films have only been available for big dollars to libraries, for select public showing after their initial screening (usually on PBS).

However, that’s apparently about to change. In a forward thinking move, Mr. Wiseman’s films are being converted to DVD for sale to the average person. This monumental news came in a tiny notice in the NYTimes earlier this week. When the films are ready for sale, supplicants will be notified via e-mail.

Send them your name. You won’t be sorry. This man knows what he’s doing.