Iconic American filmmaker Frederick Wiseman has been making observational documentaries about institutions ever since his confronting 1967 portrait of an insane asylum, Titicut Follies. In recent years, the 85-year-old has made films about a boxing gym, the Crazy Horse erotic revue in Paris and the University of California. He spoke to Jason Di Rosso about his latest work, National Gallery, about the famous London art museum.

Jason Di Rosso: Why the National Gallery?

Frederick Wiseman: They gave me permission and it’s one of the great galleries of the world. Compared to the Louvre or the Prado or the MET, it’s small. It has 2,400 paintings; there’s no sculpture, no Asian vases, no calligraphy; so I felt I had a chance of covering various activities that took place. A museum like the Louvre, for example, is enormous, with all different kinds of collections, so it would have been impossible. It was hard enough to cover the National Gallery in a three hour movie—the Louvre I would have had to do 10 three hour movies.

JDR: It’s an interesting portrait in that it is so multilayered and there are a couple quite politically charged moments, yet it isn’t necessarily a film that focuses on that. So much of the film is people talking about art. Did you always anticipate that kind of mix?

One of the things that fascinates me is the way different forms of knowledge are passed on, and also it’s connected to one of the themes of the movie, because the movie is, at least from my point of view, about how the same material is dealt with in different forms—in a movie, aurally, in a play, a ballet Frederick Wiseman, filmmaker

FW: I don’t anticipate anything when I start a film because I have no idea what I’m going to find, because I don’t do any research before the shooting starts. The shooting is the research, and the final film is based on the sequences I find. I try never to start a film with a predetermined or ideological point of view, but have the final film be a response to what I’ve learned; in the case of National Gallery being there for three months and then studying the material as I edit it, which took me 13 months.

JDR: Do you find the editing process more invigorating as a creative process than the actual shooting?

FW: I think both are. I do particularly like the editing process because that’s where you find the movie. You’ve got to have good picture and good sound and interesting sequences, but you make or break the material in the editing.

JDR: I imagine that getting that much material down to even a three hour film must require a very steely determination to get to your own truth.

FW: You have to sit in the chair and work away at it until it gets done.

JDR: Do you ever feel torn between your feeling of where the film needs to go and the way you’re representing the people in the picture?

FW: No. I mean, maybe [I’m] delusional but I always feel that I arrive at something that represents a fair report on my experience at the place and in trying to think my way through the material. That may be self-deceptive but I’ve never felt that I hadn’t accomplished that to the best of my ability.

JDR: You do often talk about trying to capture a feeling about a place when you’re talking about your films. I think you’ve always made it clear that you never tried to be someone claiming to capture some kind of objectivity—you’re not about that, you don’t believe in that.

FW: Well I wouldn’t know how to do it. I think it’s impossible. I certainly wouldn’t even try because I think it’s a futile effort. The word I use in place of objectivity is ‘fair’, and that’s obviously a very subjective word—fair to my assessment of what is going on individually in the sequences and collectively in all of them.

JDR: The film is also concerned with the passing on of knowledge, through the guides, art critics, and teachers. What is it about these mentor figures and the human endeavour of passing on knowledge that fascinates you?

FW: One of the things that fascinates me is the way different forms of knowledge are passed on, and also it’s connected to one of the themes of the movie, because the movie is, at least from my point of view, about how the same material is dealt with in different forms—in a movie, aurally, in a play, a ballet. A choreographer, a novelist, a filmmaker [and] a painter all deal in the abstract with the same kinds of problems—the problems of the passage of time, characterization, rhythm, abstraction, metaphor, etcetera. The way they resolve them is different in each form and with each work, but the overall issues are the same, and that’s one of the themes the movie is trying to deal with.

JDR: From the very beginning of your career with Titicut Follies in ‘67, you’ve been making films about institutions—is it the tensions between the messiness of life and the human tendency to regulate that brings you back to them again and again?

FW: Well that’s certainly one of the subjects, but it’s not the only subject. There has to be a certain amount of order in life for people to be able to live together, and the state has a role in providing that order, which is sometimes accomplished successfully, and other times less successfully. I think it’s just as important to show the noble and the good and the successful efforts as it is to show the failures, and I think my films deal with both and things in between. I’m basically interested in trying to show as much different human activity as I can in the films. At the same time, I’m trying to construct a dramatic narrative in order to tell those stories or deal with those ideas.

JDR: When in the filmmaking process does the dramatic narrative tend to emerge?

FW: Only at the end. Only after I’ve edited all the sequences that I think I might use in the film do I begin to work on the structure, and it’s out of that work that the dramatic narrative emerges. It’s a bit like writing; it’s not the same thing as writing a novel, but it has similarities to writing a novel.

JDR: When you’re actually filming, how immersive is it?

FW: Usually the movie is shot over a consecutive period of time, but the most you might shoot in the course of the day is 12 hours. It usually goes seven days a week if the place is open seven days a week. National Gallery was, but High School was only five days a week. But usually I try to be at the place all day during the period of time the film is being shot.

JDR: Does that kind of level of immersion help you capture things in an intuitive way?

FW: It does, because you get involved in the rhythm of the life of the place and one thing leads to another, whereas if you were shooting every third day you would lose whatever was taking place in the days you weren’t shooting, and the associations and connections connected with those events.

JDR: You’re in your eighties and you’re still going strong—how hard is it physically to make these films?

FW: You have to be in shape. It’s demanding, but I work very hard to keep in shape and making these films is a kind of sport. You can’t stand on your feet for 12 hours a day trying to be reasonably alert, carrying equipment around and making judgments if you’re not in physically good condition.

JDR: How do you get people so comfortable with the camera?

FW: I don’t know if it’s anything special I do. No lights are used; the camera and the tape recorder are handheld for most of it. I spend a lot of time talking to people, because most of the time you’re not shooting and when you’re not shooting it’s useful to talk to the people at the place, particularly the people running the place, because they know what’s going on. They can say, ‘Next Friday afternoon there’s a meeting you ought to go to,’ or, ‘If you come here an hour before the National Gallery opens you’ll be able to see the people polishing the floor.’ So I pay a lot of attention to what the people at the place tell me and I follow up on that.

JDR: I read that in the past you have turned off the camera when you thought people were starting to play up to it—is that true?

FW: That happens so rarely it’s not a problem. I don’t think the camera has much, if any, effect on people’s behavior. I don’t think most of us are good enough actors to suddenly change our behavior. If we don’t want our picture taken we say no or thumb our nose and walk away. But if people agree to be photographed they act in ways they think are appropriate for the situation they’re in, and that’s what you want.

JDR: Do you see any relation at all between what you do and the emergence of reality TV?

FW: No. No, I think I watched so-called reality television once for about 30 seconds and was so revolted I never watched it again. Somebody once said I was the godfather of reality television, which was an idea that nauseated me.

Frederick Wiseman, Focus, Lucky Them, Red Sorghum Friday 6 March 2015 Listen to the fulle episode of The Final Cut to hear master documentarian Frederick Wiseman talk about his latest film, National Gallery. More This [series episode segment] has image,

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