The Penn Libraries have recently acquired the thirty documentaries of the highly regarded documentary filmmaker Frederick Wiseman. The titles now on DVD include Ballet (1995), Domestic Violence (2001), High School (1968), State Legislature (2006), and Titicut Follies (1967).

According to Phillipe Pilard,

"Fred Wiseman is probably one of today's greatest living documentary filmmakers. For close to thirty years, thanks to the Public Broadcast Service (PBS), he has created an exceptional body of work consisting of thirty full length films devoted primarily to exploring American institutions. Over time these films have become a record of the western world, since now more than ever as we approach the century's close, nothing North American is really foreign to us.

"The institutions that Wiseman examined early in his career, a hospital, a high school, army basic training, a welfare center, a police precinct, have problems that the filmmaker uncovers. His approach reveals the profound acknowledged and unacknowledged conformity and inequality of American society. Wiseman's films are also a reflection on democracy. What do his films portray, the American dream or the air conditioned nightmare? Both, but also a questioning of the world and of existence." (http://www.zipporah.com/wiseman)

These films will be available for borrowing from the Van Pelt Library Circulation Desk. We expect that students and faculty alike will be quick to appreciate them as an important cultural and historical resource - especially as time and the march of history moves us inevitably and inexorably away from the period of their production.

For more information:
Martha Brogan, Director of Collection Development & Management
David Nelson, Cinema Studies Bibliographer