A former lawyer and professor, Frederick Wiseman, b. Boston, Jan. 1,
1930, makes controversial documentary films about public, tax-supported
institutions, through which he reveals the more general attitudes of U.S.
society. Wiseman's free-form, nonnarrative method involves filming hours of
footage in which no one is told how to act and subsequently creating a
structure through extensive editing. Wiseman made his first film, Titicut
Follies (1967), at a Massachusetts institution for the criminally insane;
his later films include High School (1968), Law and Order (1969)--which
portrays the police--Hospital (1970), and Welfare (1975).

Bibliography: Atkins, Thomas R., ed., Frederick Wiseman (1976); Levin, G.
Roy, Documentary Explorations (1971).