The Cinematheque

“This is where [Wiseman] started to truly discover his gift for juxtaposition, learning to create meaning from the proximity of one vignette to another.”

A.A. Dowd, A.V. Club

Education is arguably the central subject of Frederick Wiseman’s project: how an individual, a community, or, in his case, a filmmaker learns how to conceive of the world in which they live. Though he would expand and revisit this relationship in the school films that follow High School, including the epic High School II, here the world is flattened: there are very few equal exchanges of learning; instead we glimpse duels of authority, the removal of choice, and the hard physical facts of the school day. (One could say that students in Wiseman’s footage are shown doing three things only: sitting still, following orders, and receiving ideological sermons on gender, war, and working life.) Wiseman’s way of emphatically connecting scenes led High School to be received by some, along with Titicut Follies, as the work of an exposé artist. Yet the film is designed to be representative rather than extreme; its alienating world of adult power and intimidation is only too typical.

The March 20 screening of High School will be introduced by filmmaker Shannon Walsh. A discussion between Walsh and UBC professor Mila Zuo will follow the screening.

“High School seems an obvious kind of film to make, but as far as I know no one before has gone into an ordinary, middle-class, ​‘good’ high school with a camera and looked around to see what it’s like … Wiseman is probably the most sophisticated intelligence to enter the documentary field in recent years.”

Pauline Kael, The New Yorker