Frederick Wiseman: An American Institution
a retrospective at Film at Lincoln Center, New York City, January 31–March 5, 2025
The Worlds of Wiseman
a retrospective at the Gene Siskel Film Center, Chicago, January 1–February 5, 2025
Voyages of Discovery: The Cinema of Frederick Wiseman, Revised and Expanded Edition
by Barry Keith Grant.
Wallflower, 366 pp., $140.00;
$35.00 (paper)
Menus-Plaisirs—Les Troisgros
a documentary film directed
by Frederick Wiseman
Frederick Wiseman has been called a muckraker, a realist, an absurdist, a lyrical expressionist, a trenchant critic of American consumerism and imperialism, a hedonist, a champion of civic virtue, and, by Errol Morris, “the king of misanthropic cinema.” Wiseman himself has been consistently reluctant to define his documentaries. He and they, he has suggested, are too elusive: “I am not sure I understand…