Revisited this for an upcoming appearance on the beloved Wiseman Podcast. Staggeringly good. There's something radical about how long Wiseman in his late period will make you sit with something he finds interesting. There's a scene here where we sit in on a book club discussion of Love in the Time of Cholera, and after a while we start to feel like honorary members.

In 2017, I think I reacted most strongly to the #nicecore elements of this movie: the braille lesson, the seniors' dance club, the lunchtime classical music performance, the enthusiastic guy who works at the photo archive, etc. I still love all that stuff, but now that I'm more familiar with Wiseman, the subtle currents of frustration…

Most of Frederick Wiseman’s films are long, but very few of them — possibly none — are too long. There’s a good reason for that. Actually, there are a lot of good reasons for that, but one tends to rise above the rest: Boredom is fundamentally antithetical to his work. Cinematically vivisecting American institutions since 1967, Wiseman has been able to sustain interest throughout endless documentary epics like “At Berkeley” and “Belfast, Maine” because his observational approach insists that drama is woven into the fabric of everyday life, and because his shrewd instinct for non-linear storytelling proves that point beyond any shadow of a doubt. His best films frame reality in a way that allows us to see it more…

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excerpt from my review for Cineaste:

Near the beginning of Ex Libris, just after showing the Richard Dawkins talk, Wiseman takes us down into a small office where three individuals are answering phones. No other part of the film looks like this, which is notable precisely because so much of so many other Wiseman films look exactly like this – humble administrative laborers, noses to the grindstone, making sure the institution’s grand edifice doesn’t collapse. But this is a different place. The workers are research librarians working the NYPL’s question line. New Yorkers who are stumped by a particular issue can call and draw on the library’s vast reference resources, as well as the obviously extensive collection of minutiae…

revisited this, one of my first Wiseman experiences, after revisiting Central Park to see just how similar they are. there are some very on-the-nose callbacks like seeing people hanging out in the green spaces outside, but plenty other deeper connections throughout.

primarily, Ex Libris is also asking who the library is for, and how does the library see itself in position with NYC's population, patrons and even potential patrons. the central question of whether the library is reflecting and reinforcing the socio-economic and historic structures of the city outside it or is it doing something to try and deconstruct them through access and opportunity? the answer, typical for these late-period Wiseman's especially, is not so straightforward and one could go…

"In Wiseman’s Jackson Heights, he posed a growing society full of nooks and corners and crannies of populations that truly filled the idea of the “nation of immigrants.” But he also looked at the threat from capitalist America and the creeping horrors that gentrification could bring, how that attempted to stamp out our diversity. The library offers a different take on how large institutions benefit communities. As Wiseman expands, we see the micromanaging of small groups, responding to their unique needs. Every individual needs a different library—a different type of knowledge—and NYPL’s goal is to provide that. The delivery of knowledge always comes with a bias, as a sign translator explains in two deliveries of the Declaration of Independence. And…

maybe the movie of the year if only for the scene with the guy talking excitedly about the latent sexual undertones of deli meats to an audience of indifferent old people.

but on a more serious note, i've just finished reading srnicek and williams' excellent INVENTING THE FUTURE: postcapitalism and a world without work, and i can think of few better manifestations of the sort of counter-hegemonic projects they describe than the new york public library. wiseman takes us into the libraries at their most microcosmic, the lowest of (what srnicek & williams would call) the "folk" or local levels, with individual branches devoted to the needs of specific communities and neighborhoods. this is my first wiseman, but he almost effortlessly…