Arts writer Derek McArthur looks at the life and work of film documentarian Frederick Wiseman in the wake of his passing.

Frederick Wiseman, the long-working documentary filmmaker who shifted the relationship between the camera and our lives under institutions, died on Monday at the grand age of 96.

Wiseman’s innovations were plentiful, and most importantly, thoughtful. Pairing a lightweight camera with high-speed film gave him an opening to document what was not possible before, his particular interest focusing on the institutional framework of America and the people within it.

He would shoot 100 hours of footage to get maybe 3 or 4 hours. The substance and narrative of the film would come from vast amounts of editing, where he would meticulously edit nearly all his films himself. Many tributes will talk about Wiseman’s objective look at reality through the camera, but he knew no such thing existed. His editing decisions were just as reality-shaping as what the camera took in.

“A fiction film has a script,” he said, “so at the very least the chronology is determined in advance. But a documentary film of the kind I make, it’s reversed: I write the script in the editing.”

“I’m not saying there aren’t choices in the editing in a fiction film, because of course there are. But the range of choices aren’t anywhere near as great as they are in a documentary.”

Jean-Luc Godard: the........

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