Frederick Wiseman visits DocPoint 2006

Legendary documentary film director Frederick Wiseman will visit Helsinki as a guest of honour of DocPoint Helsinki Documentary Film Festival and a key speaker of DocPoint's Masterclass. DocPoint screens a Wiseman-retorspective of ten films. 5th edition of DocPoint festival takes place in 25-29th of January 2006.

American film maker Frederick Wiseman is one of the most remarkable auteurs of documentary cinema. In his films, Wiseman does not use a narrator's voice to explain, but challenges the audience to make up their own mind by showing and reporting. Wiseman himself has called his films reality fictions, because working the material into the film form requires careful dramatization.

Wiseman's career as a documentarist started in the 1960's. In his films, he studies the workings of society and institutions in a local, every-day level. In several Wiseman films, the continous battle of man against the banalities of bureaucracy is an important theme. 75-year-old Wiseman still works as an artist: his latest film was finished in 2004 and in the fall of 2005 a play directed by him premiered in Paris.

Ealier Frederick Wiseman's work has been seen in Finland on Finnish television. For example, Finland is one of the few countries where the nearly 6 hours long "Near Death" has been shown in television in it's entire length. His works are now presented for the first time in this quantity in Finnish silver screens by DocPoint festival. In the 29th of January Frederick Wiseman will lecture in DocPoint Masterclass for documentary film students, film makers and professionals.

DocPoint's Frederick Wiseman retrospective

The retrospective of Frederic Wiseman screened in DocPoint includes ten films and stretches over almost 40 years, widely presenting Wisemans lenghty career as a documentarist. The films screened are "Titicut Follies" (1967), "Law and Order" (1969), "Hospital" (1970), " Welfare" (1975), "Meat" (1976), "Model" (1980), "The Store" (1983), "Aspen" (1991), "High School II" (1994) and "Domestic Violence" (2001).

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Liisa Lehmusto
Press Coordinator
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Email. press@docpoint.info