By Ray Pride Pride@moviecitynews.com
Wiseman's documentary Award of Distinction
David E. Williams talks to Fred Wiseman as the American Society of Cinematographers gives the vet docco maker their Award of Distinction, which he’ll get at the ASC Awards on February 25. “I’ve always picked subjects that have been around for a time, are common in America and have their counterparts in most other countries — the army, police, education, hospitals, prisons. The subject that links all my films is experiences that are common to many people.” How do his films reflect American culture? “My films are subjective, impressionistic accounts of some aspect of American culture. It’s impossible for me to calculate what effect or impact a film or group of films may have. It would be quite pretentious of me to say, ‘They have had the following effect.’ People come to films with such diverse individual life experiences that it’s hard to determine in advance how they might respond to or read a work. I don’t believe there is any direct, traceable relationship between any single work and social change. My movies are more novelistic than journalistic or ideological in their approach.
I always try to reflect the complexity and ambiguity of the place that is the subject of the film, rather than have ideological blinders on and try to present a particular political or social point of view. I’ve never found any ideology that adequately explains the complex events I’ve come across while making these films. It would be phony for me to offer solutions or explanations when I haven’t found any I believe in. I instead try to supply the audience with enough material to help them make up their own minds by placing them in the events and asking them to think through their own relationship to what they’re seeing and hearing.” [More stuff, including the technical, at the link.]