Frederic Wiseman, documentary filmmaker, dies at 96 Frederic Wiseman

Frederick Wiseman, the prolific director whose documentaries primarily explored American public institutions and societies, has died at the age of 96.

His death was announced Monday in a joint statement from Weisman’s family and his production company, Zipporah Films.

“Over nearly six decades, Frederick Wiseman has created an unparalleled body of work, a comprehensive cinematic record of contemporary social institutions and ordinary human experience primarily in the United States and France,” the statement read. “His films – from Titicut Follies (1967) to his most recent work, Menus-Plaisirs – Les Troisgros (2023) – are celebrated for their complexity, narrative power, and human outlook.”

Weisman, whose exceptional career was recognized with an honorary Academy Award in 2016, has directed and produced nearly 50 films, including City Hall (2020), about Boston’s city government; Ex Libris (2017), by the New York Public Library; In Jackson Heights (2015), it revolves around a neighborhood in Queens, New York.

Often associated with the live and verité cinema movements, he never conducted interviews or staged events for his documentaries and used only natural lighting and digital sound, with no voice-overs or scores. He did no research before embarking on each project, and showed up with a sense of curiosity and a desire to learn.

“Making a film is always an adventure,” Wiseman said upon accepting his Oscar in 2016. “I usually know nothing about the subject before I start… I never start with a point of view on the subject, or a thesis I want to prove. Nor do I do any research in advance before shooting. I usually don’t know in advance what I’m going to shoot, or what I’m going to encounter on any given day or at any moment of the day.”

He documents hundreds of hours of footage of his subjects, sifting through it in an intense editing process that can last up to 10 months.

Although he is associated with the reality style of documentary filmmaking, he described his films as closer to “visual novels” than to journalistic accounts.

Weisman was born in Boston, attended Williams College and then Yale Law School. After graduating in 1954, he was drafted into the US Army, where he served two years as a court reporter, before studying law in Paris under the GI Bill. After returning to the United States, he took a teaching position at Boston University’s Institute of Law and Medicine.

During this time Weisman became interested in documentary filmmaking, and produced the 1963 semi-documentary The Cool World, adapted from Warren Miller’s novel about life in a Harlem gang. Four years later, he made his directorial debut with Titicut Follies, which documented life at Bridgewater State Hospital in Massachusetts for the criminally insane.

This was almost his last film: its harrowing account of the inhumane treatment of hospital inmates was banned from public viewing by the Massachusetts Supreme Court, and until 1991 could only be shown privately to medical professionals. But Wiseman forged ahead, directing three films in the next three years.

Weisman has had a long-standing passion for theater and dance, as seen in films such as La Danse (2009), which provided a behind-the-scenes glimpse of the Paris Opera Ballet, and Crazy Horse (2011), about the infamous Paris cabaret club.

His progressive political views were evident in his works, including films such as Welfare (1975) about New York’s benefits system, although Weisman has said he had no interest in ideological filmmaking and resisted the idea that documentaries are forces for political or social change. Writing for the magazine Dox: Documentary Quarterly in 1994, he said: “Documentaries – like plays, novels and poems – are fictional in form and have no measurable social benefit.”

His latest 2023 film, Menus-Plaisirs – Les Troisgros, was set behind the scenes at a famous three-Michelin-starred restaurant in France.

Speaking about his approach to choosing a subject, Weisman said in 2016: “Every film is also an opportunity, a chance to learn something about a new subject. I have been on a 50-year course in adult education where I am the so-called adult who studies a new subject every year.

“The diversity and complexity of human behavior observed in the making of one film and, cumulatively, all films is astonishing, and I believe it is as important to document kindness, civility, and generosity of spirit as it is to demonstrate cruelty, vulgarity, and indifference.”

Weissman has two sons, David and Eric, and three grandchildren, as well as Karen Konicek, his friend and collaborator, who has worked with him for 45 years. His wife of 65 years, Zipporah Bacho Weissman, died in 2021.