''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 port, Oakland is the largest city in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area, the third largest city overall in the ...

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 s ...

, 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 arou ...

, and The Takeaway. ''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 n ...

'' 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 Michael H. de Young. The pa ...

'' 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 Wan ...

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

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Oakland Local

BAVC article on The Waiting Room

Highland Hospital

BAVC 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