Filmmaker Frederick Wiseman coming to the Cinematheque

[Press release from the Cleveland Cinematheque.]

Frederick Wiseman, the dean of America’s documentary filmmakers, is coming to the Cleveland Institute of Art Cinematheque on Sunday, January 25, at 1:00 pm for a program entitled AN AFTERNOON WITH FREDERICK WISEMAN. The legendary moviemaker, who has directed 40 feature-length documentaries in a career spanning almost 50 years, and whose latest film NATIONAL GALLERY is turning up on many Ten Best lists for 2014, will answer audience questions after a series of clips from some of his films. Tickets to the event, which will take place in CIA’s Aitken Auditorium at 11141 East Boulevard, cost $25; Cinematheque members and CIA students and staff $20; ages 25 & under $12. $25 and $20 tickets can be purchased in advance at http://wiseman.brownpapertickets.com/

At Berkeley (December 5th and 6th at the Cleveland Cinematheque)

[AT BERKELEY screens Thursday December 5th at 6:45 pm and Friday December 6th at 7:30 pm at the Cleveland Cinematheque.]

Review by Charles Cassady, Jr.

I've been starting to Tweet my dreams, when they can be summarized to 180 characters (and if I remember them, and if they're at all entertaining). You can follow and psychoanalyze me at "#cassxdy" if you care. And I'll save you the trouble and bandwidth at present by telling you my most recent odd dream right here and now.

In the dream I was newly hired at some kind of TV production company, one behind a popular British CSI-crime drama. These studios were located near or in downtown Cleveland. There was no glamour; the reception-area looked like an old concrete garage or repurposed warehouse, with a few other businesses leasing space. There was a constant stream of delivery folks, of acting and crew hopefuls and my job, part-time and rudimentary, seemed to be as a doorman or something. I wasn't even certain what my working hours/days were, making it worrisome how I was to fit this in between my other minimum-wage going-nowhere part-time jobs. Oh, and for some reason as I came to work I had no pants on. I was hoping nobody would notice.

Crazy Horse (May 12th and 13th at the Cleveland Cinematheque)

[CRAZY HORSE screens Saturday May 12th at 7:10 pm and Sunday May 13th at 8:30 pm  at the Cleveland Cinematheque. Adults only.]

Review by Pamela Zoslov

Frederick Wiseman, who is now 82, has been making his own brand of documentary films since 1967. A lawyer who became a filmmaker, he created a style that has been called “observational cinema,” in which his camera captures the daily life of an institution – a high school, a public housing project, a battered women's shelter, a welfare office, a racetrack and, in TITICUT FOLLIES (1967), Massachusetts' Bridgewater Hospital for the criminally insane. Wiseman rejects the term “cinema vérité” as pompous and meaningless. He doesn't merely “hang around,” he says; he edits the hundreds of hours of film he shoots rhythmically and meaningfully to tell a human story.

Many of the films are deeply moving, and in some cases, they have exposed abuses and helped bring about reforms. TITICUT FOLLIES, after being banned for many years, influenced the eventual closing of Bridgewater. But not every subject is equally well served by Wiseman's technique. In recent years, he has focused on lighter subjects – a boxing gym, the American Ballet Theatre, the Paris Opera Ballet and now, The Crazy Horse, the legendary Paris cabaret. CRAZY HORSE, Wiseman's 39^th film, follows rehearsals, preparations and backstage activities in preparation for the club's latest nude dancing extravaganza, called Desir.

Boxing Gym (February 18th and 20th at the Cleveland Museum of Art)

[BOXING GYM screens  Friday, February 18th at 7 p.m. and Sunday, February 20th at 1:30 p.m. at the Cleveland Museum of Art Morley Lecture Hall.]

Review by Pamela Zoslov

“It’s viewed as a violent sport, but everyone here is super-nice and friendly. If anyone comes in here acting like a tough-ass, they wouldn’t last very long.” So says one of the habitués of BOXING GYM, the latest documentary from the estimable Frederick Wiseman, which takes us inside Lord’s Boxing Gym in Austin, Texas. Wiseman’s unobtrusive camera reveals the quotidian rhythms and casual camaraderie among the men and women, some of them amateur and professional fighters, who work out at Lord’s, an uncommonly friendly, low-key training facility.

This is Wiseman’s 38th documentary for PBS; the filmmaker, now 81, created and perfected a non-directive technique of planting himself and his camera in the midst of an institution – a high school, a battered-women’s shelter, the American Ballet Theatre and the Paris Opera Ballet, the Idaho state legislature, a welfare office, Army basic training – without imposing any outside narration or point of view. The result is a vivid, unvarnished portrait of human behavior within a social milieu. His first film, the controversial 1967 TITICUT FOLLIES, took viewers inside an asylum for the criminally insane, the Massachusetts Correctional Institution in Bridgewater (the title was taken from a talent show performed by the inmates).