JTA — Frederick Wiseman became a globally celebrated documentary filmmaker by capturing the inner workings of a wide range of social institutions, from governments to schools, small towns, and cultural centers.

But years before they opened their doors to his cameras, institutions were shutting Wiseman out — because he was Jewish.

“I’m very aware of my Jewish heritage. I was aware of antisemitism from the time I was four years old,” Wiseman, who died Monday at the age of 96, recalled to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in 2021.

In Boston in 1930, Wiseman’s father, a Russian-born judge, had his appointment to municipal court rejected when his superiors discovered he was Jewish. As a child, Wiseman recalled his family would hear Father Charles Coughlin, the antisemitic “radio priest,” over the airwaves. When Wiseman himself enrolled in Williams College in the postwar era, he found that all the campus fraternities excluded Jews.

Incensed, Wiseman joined the student newspaper, working to, in his words, “undermine the fraternity system.” His interest in systems would percolate throughout his filmmaking career, beginning with “Titticut Follies” in 1967, an intimate examination of a hospital for the criminally insane. The film’s harrowing footage caused a sensation when it was released, and it was banned from public screenings for decades.

Wiseman’s filmography over the following decades — he would direct 45 in all, plus some theatrical productions in France — would be noted far less for sensationalism than for quieter,........

© The Times of Israel