Documentary Moments

Conceived by filmmaker Eyal Sivan, the long-term project “Documentary Moments” elaborates documentary film practice through screenings and encounters with filmmakers who shaped particular moments of the practice’s history. Its initial chapter is an homage to artists who contributed to the renaissance of documentary film in the post-war period: Alain Resnais (b. 1921), Edgar Morin (b. 1921), Marcel Ophuls (b. 1928), and Frederick Wiseman (b. 1930).

Frederick Wiseman has scrutinised American life and institutions revealing the mechanisms of administration and hierarchy. As a benchmark in the history of social documentary, as both a school and a genre, Wiseman’s infinitely re-qualified and “direct” cinema is indispensable in any debate on the potential of the documentary image to produce truth. A conversation between Frederick Wiseman and film historian Stella Bruzzis followed by a screening of Primate (F. Wiseman, USA 1974, 105 min).