Cheap Eats
By Dan Leone

Lit

Noise

Bars & Clubs

Our Masthead

Editorial Staff

Business Staff

Jobs & Internships

PLACE A CLASSIFIED AD | PERSONALS | MOVIE CLOCK | REP CLOCK | SEARCH

THOUGH THE AIM of cinema vérité has always been to capture truth 24 frames (or x number of pixels) a second, the inevitably intruding presence of the camera, and the authorial eye behind it, can't help shaping the "reality" unfolding in front of the lens. However, judging from the way the "stars" of Frederick Wiseman's epic documentaries (he prefers the more apt term reality fictions) continually seem to damn themselves with their own words, actions, and inactions, it would be easy to think the person operating that shuttered apparatus had simply set it up and let the reels run. Lacking music, voice-overs, and linear narratives, Wiseman's films don't resemble typically subjective cinematic journalism so much as undiluted transmissions from a fly on the wall. He merely provides the information in pieces, trusting viewers to complete the finished big-picture puzzle. It's less a trick than a testament to the talent of a man who, after 36 years of unblinkingly dismantling institutions ranging from a typical American high school to the Strategic Air Command's nuclear arsenal unit, is inarguably the greatest nonfiction filmmaker working today. Though PBS intermittently airs his three-hour-plus films, screenings are rarer than comet sightings, and none of his work is widely available on video. Thus, the Pacific Film Archive's partial retrospective of Wiseman's oeuvre is a dream come true. Seventeen of his films are scheduled, including his infamous mental hospital exposé Titicut Follies (1967), the devastating critique of crushed individuality known as High School (1968), and the devolutionary science friction of Primate (1974). Long praised but scarcely seen, his work has garnered a reputation for being the best that "direct cinema" has to offer. Finally, audiences will get a chance to witness firsthand that rarest of celluloid commodities: the stone-cold truth. See Rep Clock for show times. (David Fear)