''The Waiting Room'' is a 2012 American documentary film and social media project directed by
Peter Nicks
Peter Nicks is an American filmmaker.
Peter Olivera Nicks (born May 2, 1968) is an American film director, producer and writer. He began his career in television and served as co-producer and editor of the 2006 episode "Blame Somebody Else" of ...
that follows the life and times of patients, doctors, and staff at
Highland Hospital, a
safety-net hospital in
Oakland, California
Oakland is the largest city and the county seat of Alameda County, California, United States. A major West Coast of the United States, West Coast port, Oakland is the largest city in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area, the third ...
.
Summary
The project includes a blog which features stories and conversations from the
waiting room
A waiting room or waiting hall is a building, or more commonly a part of a building or a room, where people sit or stand until the event or appointment for which they are waiting begins.
There are two types of waiting room. One has individuals ...
as well as behind-the-scenes information about the project. Frequent video updates from the project are posted on the blog.
These videos examine what life is like in an American public hospital caring for a community of largely uninsured patients.
The project involves placing interactive storytelling booths in hospital waiting rooms.
These kiosks will include the live-blogged reports from people living without health insurance, and a unique online portal that will distribute these stories and become an archive for the testimonials that will highlight the urgency of the national dialogue around health care.
Production
''The Waiting Room'' is funded by the
MacArthur Foundation
The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation is a private foundation that makes grants and impact investments to support non-profit organizations in approximately 50 countries around the world. It has an endowment of $7.0 billion and p ...
,
Independent Television Service
ITVS (Independent Television Service) is a service in the United States which funds and presents documentaries on public television through distribution by PBS and American Public Television, new media projects on the Internet, and the weekly seri ...
, The Fledgling Fund, The San Francisco Foundation, California Council for the Humanities, the Pacific Pioneer Find, and the
San Francisco Film Society
SFFILM, formerly known as The San Francisco Film Society, is a nonprofit arts organization located in San Francisco, California, that presents year-round programs and events in film exhibition, media education, and filmmaker services.
The Execut ...
. Its key partners include the
Bay Area Video Coalition
BAVC Media, previously known as the Bay Area Video Coalition (BAVC), is a nonprofit organization that works to connect independent producers and underrepresented communities to emerging media technologies. It was founded in 1976 in San Francisc ...
, Active Voice,
Pentagram
A pentagram (sometimes known as a pentalpha, pentangle, or star pentagon) is a regular five-pointed star polygon, formed from the diagonal line segments of a convex (or simple, or non-self-intersecting) regular pentagon. Drawing a circle aroun ...
, and
The Takeaway
''The Takeaway'' is a morning radio news program co-created and co-produced by Public Radio International and WNYC. Its editorial partner is WGBH-FM; at launch the BBC World Service and ''The New York Times'' were also editorial partners. In ...
. ''The Waiting Room'' has also been featured on the New York Times Lens Blog as Videos Worth Watching.
Critical reception
Both ''
The Washington Post
''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large nati ...
'' and the ''
San Francisco Chronicle
The ''San Francisco Chronicle'' is a newspaper serving primarily the San Francisco Bay Area of Northern California. It was founded in 1865 as ''The Daily Dramatic Chronicle'' by teenage brothers Charles de Young and M. H. de Young, Michael H. de ...
'' named the film on the 10 Best of the Year lists. Critic Ann Hornaday of ''The Washington Post'' named ''The Waiting Room'' the third best film of 2012. Wrote Hornaday: "This subtle, compassionate tableau lifts the veil on a world often described in terms of squalor and despair, finding the inherent dignity and perseverance therein."
The movie holds a "fresh" rating of 100% on
Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...
based on 34 reviews, with a
weighted average
The weighted arithmetic mean is similar to an ordinary arithmetic mean (the most common type of average), except that instead of each of the data points contributing equally to the final average, some data points contribute more than others. The ...
of 8.41/10.
References
External links
*
*
Oakland LocalBAVC article on The Waiting RoomHighland HospitalBAVC Video About The Waiting Room''The Waiting Room'' page on ITVS website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Waiting Room
American documentary films
2012 films
2012 documentary films
2010s English-language films
Films set in the San Francisco Bay Area
Documentary films about health care
Healthcare in Oakland, California
2010s American films