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I do not think that my films or films by any other filmmaker represent THE TRUTH. I do not feel the need to categorize my films or anyone else's.

Frederick Wiseman

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Frederick Wiseman
Age: 94
Born: 1930
Born: January 1
Documentarian
Film Director
Film Editor
Film Producer
Filmmaker
Screenwriter
University Teacher
Boston
Massachusetts
Thinking
Else
Film
Truth
Need
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More quotes by Frederick Wiseman

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My job as a film editor is to construct a dramatic narrative because otherwise it's just a chaotic arrangement of sequences.
Frederick Wiseman
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Whether you're a newspaper journalist, a lawyer, a doctor. You have to organize your thoughts.
Frederick Wiseman
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I'm interested in ordinary experience, and regardless of the precise definition of ordinary, and I've found that in so-called ordinary experience, there is as much comedy, tragedy, sadness, as there is in great drama. And I don't invent it, I recognize it.
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Of course there's conscious manipulation! Everything about a movie is manipulation ... If you like it, it's an interpretation. If you don't like it, it's a lie - but everything about these movies is a distortion.
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I don't really know what I want, other than good sequences, whatever that means. What I find is always a matter of chance, judgment, and luck.
Frederick Wiseman
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Even if I know I'm going to go to a church, I don't know what the minister's going to say.
Frederick Wiseman
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I am bad at cultural generalizations but I would venture to say that by a wide margin there is less hypocrisy about sex in France than in America.
Frederick Wiseman
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Everything about a movie is manipulation.
Frederick Wiseman
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I don't like to read novels where the novelist tells me what to think about the situation and the characters. I prefer to discover for myself.
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You have to edit the material. That assumes that some kind of a mind is operating in relation to the material. Not all minds are the same. Every aspect of filmmaking requires choice. The selection of the subject, the shooting, editing and length are all aspects of choice.
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Unfortunately, I never played an instrument. I can't blame my parents, but I wish I had had music lessons. It's odd because I think I have a good sense of rhythm, as they say in some fields. But I don't know anything about music.
Frederick Wiseman
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There's a literal track: who says what to whom, what are people wearing, etcetera. And there's the abstract track: what ideas are suggested by the literal. And the real movie takes place in the relationship between the literal and the abstract.
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Anybody whose mind is functioning at all can't be content with the way the world works.
Frederick Wiseman
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Documentary filmmaking ruins you for real life, because you learn to be extremely attentive.
Frederick Wiseman