Voyages of Discovery: The Cinema of Frederick Wiseman (Nonfictions)

Synopsis

Frederick Wiseman is America’s foremost chronicler of public institutions. His films have focused on city, state, and local governments; hospitals; asylums; creative organizations and museums; schools; libraries; and more. In recent years, Wiseman’s work has reached a new level of popularity, with films such as In Jackson Heights (2015), Monrovia, Indiana (2018), and City Hall (2020) all earning widespread acclaim.Voyages of Discovery is the definitive account of Wiseman’s career, offering a comprehensive analysis of the work of the leading documentary filmmaker in the United States. In this updated edition, Barry Keith Grant adds new material exploring the documentarian’s works since the 1990s, discussing every film in Wiseman’s remarkable sixty-year career. He examines the core concerns running across Wiseman’s work from the early films, which focus on documenting institutional failure, through an expanding interest in cultural institutions and ideology, to a blossoming embrace of democracy in later films. He pays particular attention to Wiseman’s strategies for involving and implicating the spectator in the institutional processes the films document. Grant also places Wiseman within the history of the documentary and other traditions of American art and considers the relationship between documentary film and authorship. Voyages of Discovery is an important book for anyone interested in Wiseman’s work or how documentary film can reveal the fabric of our shared civic life.

Copyright:

2023

Book Details

Book Quality:

Publisher Quality

ISBN-13:

9780231556378

Publisher:

Columbia University Press

Date of Addition:

05/16/23

Copyrighted By:

Columbia University Press

Adult content:

No

Language:

English

Has Image Descriptions:

No

Categories:

History, Entertainment, Nonfiction, Art and Architecture

Submitted By:

Bookshare Staff

Usage Restrictions:

This is a copyrighted book.