Wiseman, Frederick definition of Wiseman, Frederick in the Free Online Encyclopedia.

Wiseman, Frederick, 1930–, American documentary filmmaker, b. Boston, grad. Williams College (B.A., 1951), Yale Law School (L.L.B., 1954). Wiseman practiced and taught law for about a decade, but his real interests lay elsewhere. His first film, Titicut Follies (1967), is a harrowingly realistic look at a Massachusetts state hospital for the criminally insane. With this work, he became known as a cinéma vérité cinéma vérité, a style of filmmaking that attempts to convey candid realism. Often employing lightweight, hand-held cameras and sound equipment, it shows people in everyday situations and uses authentic dialogue, naturalness of action, and a
..... Click the link for more information. master possessed of keen socio-psychological insights. His next films reveal a pervasive dehumanization as they examine various American institutions through the portrayal of a single example; they include High School (1969), Hospital (1970), Juvenile Court (1973), and Welfare (1975). Some later films, such as Model (1980), The Store (1983), Central Park (1990), and Ballet (1995), explore other sorts of people and places. Wiseman also entered the world of the physically challenged in three mid-1980s works. Wiseman is usually the producer-director and sometimes a writer, editor, or actor for his many films, which are mostly black and white, with neither narration nor musical soundtracks, and eschew editorialization. Wiseman has also occasionally made fictional works: The Stunt Man (1980), Seraphita's Diary (1982), and The Last Letter (2002).

Bibliography

See studies by T. R. Atkins, ed. (1976), T. W. Benson and C. Anderson (1989, rev. ed. 2002), and B. K. Grant (1992).

Wiseman, Frederick (1930– ) documentary filmmaker; born in Boston, Mass. After teaching law, he turned to making his own distinctive kind of documentaries, starting with Titicut Follies (1967) and continuing through a long series that focused on American institutions, such as Model (1980), and then increasingly on broader experiences, as in Near Death (1989). The hallmark of a Wiseman documentary is its apparently nonintrusive ability simply to record on film and in sound the minutiae of the subject and to leave all interpretation to the viewer. He formed his own film company and in later years accepted commissions from television companies and other organizations.