Word: titicut
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...reaction will hardly surprise Wiseman. Ever since the former Brandeis University law lecturer went with mike and camera into a Massachusetts state hospital for the criminally insane, he has been unquestionably the nation's most provocative film documentarian. That first film, Titicut Follies (1967), was banned by a state court after then-Massachusetts Attorney General Elliot Richardson argued that the film violated the privacy of inmates. Since then, Wiseman has gone from High School to Hospital to Basic Training. "Shooting these films about institutions," he has said, "is like being on the track of the Abominable Snowman...
SPECIAL OF THE WEEK, PBS's Monday-night alternative to pro football and Laugh-In, opened with a documentary by Fred Wiseman, the most accomplished director of the cinéma vérité genre (Titicut Follies, Hospital). This time, in Basic Training, he focused on the rigors and the ridiculousness of boot camp in the summer of 1970 at Fort Knox, but he neglected to report the substantial reforms that have swept over the Army since. The result is an engrossing film but failed journalism. This week the PBS Special is a revival...
John Marshall is the instructor. From 1958-1960, Marshall served as associate director of the Film Study Center at Harvard. He later served as cameraman-reporter for N. B. C., and photographed the controversial documentary "Titicut Follies" for Fred Wiseman...
LIKE Report. Warrendale was rejected by its sponsors: the official censure of Report found it too abstract and formalistic, while Warrendale was too earthy for Canadian television (and Titicut Follies too sensational for Massachusetts). With Wiseman's films Warrendale attempts to document the nature of institutional life using synchronized sound-recording and close shooting to situate us in the midst of events. Located somewhere near Toronto, Warrendale is a home for emotionally disturbed children; the film is what its maker, Allan King, calls a "persona record" of staff and patient life there...