''High School'' is a 1968 American

documentary film A documentary film or documentary is a non-fictional motion-picture intended to "document reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction, education or maintaining a historical record". Bill Nichols has characterized the documentary in te ...

Frederick Wiseman Frederick Wiseman (born January 1, 1930) is an American filmmaker, documentarian, and theater director. His work is "devoted primarily to exploring American institutions". He has been called "one of the most important and original filmmakers wor ...

that shows a typical day for students and faculty at a Pennsylvanian high school during the late 1960s. It is one of the first direct cinema (or

cinéma vérité Cinéma vérité (, , ; "truthful cinema") is a style of documentary filmmaking developed by Edgar Morin and Jean Rouch, inspired by Dziga Vertov's theory about Kino-Pravda. It combines improvisation with use of the camera to unveil truth or ...

) documentaries. It was shot over five weeks between March and April 1968 at Northeast High School in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The film was not shown in Philadelphia at the time of its release, because of Wiseman's concerns over what he called "vague talk" of a lawsuit. The film was released in November 1968. ''High School'' has aired on

PBS The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) is an American public broadcaster and non-commercial, free-to-air television network based in Arlington, Virginia. PBS is a publicly funded nonprofit organization and the most prominent provider of educat ...

. Wiseman distributes his work (DVDs and 16mm prints) through Zipporah Films, which rents them to high schools, colleges, and libraries on a five-year long-term lease. ''High School'' was selected in 1991 for preservation in the

National Film Registry The National Film Registry (NFR) is the United States National Film Preservation Board's (NFPB) collection of films selected for preservation, each selected for its historical, cultural and aesthetic contributions since the NFPB’s inception ...

. In 1994, Wiseman released ''High School II'', a second documentary on high school, based on Central Park East Secondary School in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...

Reception and interpretation

Film critic

David Denby David Denby (born 1943) is an American journalist. He served as film critic for ''The New Yorker'' until December 2014. Early life and education Denby grew up in New York City. He received a B. A. from Columbia University in 1965, and a master' ...

, writing in the ''New York Review of Books'', described ''High School'' as "a savagely comic portrait" of an urban high school in a period of emerging social unrest: In his review for '' The A.V. Club'', A.A. Dowd wrote that ''High School'' “is filthy with the kind of revealing behavior that a documentarian can only hope and pray to capture on camera”, concluding:

References

*Ellsworth, Liz. ''Frederick Wiseman: A Guide to References and Resources''. Boston, MA: G.K.Hall & Co., 1979. *Grant, Barry Keith. "Five films by Frederick Wiseman" University of California Press, 2006. *Rosenthal, Alan. ''The New Documentary In Action: A Casebook in Film Making''. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1971.

External links

*''High School'' essay by Barry Grant on the

website

*''High School'' essay by Daniel Eagan in America's Film Legacy: The Authoritative Guide to the Landmark Movies in the National Film Registry, A&C Black, 2010 , pages 637-63

*Comma, Space: Frederick Wiseman's "High School" (1968) essay by Craig Keller *
High School
on Kanopy. {{Frederick Wiseman 1968 films American documentary films Documentary films about high school in the United States Films directed by Frederick Wiseman Documentary films about Philadelphia United States National Film Registry films 1968 documentary films 1960s teen films 1960s high school films Education in Philadelphia 1960s English-language films 1960s American films

Reception and interpretation

See also

References

External links