- In interviews, Wiseman has emphasized that his films are not and cannot be unbiased.
- Often doesn't know anything about a subject before the filming begins. For him, with his own words, "the shooting is the research".
- While producing a film, Wiseman often acquires more than 100 hours of raw footage.
- Served in the U.S. military.
- Openly admits to manipulating his source material to create dramatic structure, and indeed insists that it is necessary to make a movie.
- In 2014 Frederick Wiseman received the 'Lifetime Achievement Award' at the '71st Venice International Film Festival'. It was only the second time that this honor was given to a documentary filmmaker after Joris Ivens had received it in 1988.
- Graduate of Yale University.
- Has made approximately one documentary film a year for the past fifty years, some with run times as long as six hours.
- Has received the Honorary Award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement from the Venice Film Festival, a Gugenheim and a MacArthur Fellowship.
- Dislikes the term observational cinema, or cinema verité.
- His films are, in his view, elaborations of a personal experience and not ideologically objective portraits of his subjects.
- Wiseman works four to six weeks in the institutions he portrays, with almost no preparation. He spends the bulk of the production period editing the material, trying to find a rhythm to make a movie.
- Trained as a lawyer.
- Took a position teaching law at Boston University in the late 1950s.
- The editing process is for him a careful craft that occupies a year of intensive work.
- Named his production company, Zipporah Films, after his wife, Zipporah Batshaw, who is a fellow Yale Law graduate of his.
- All his films have aired on PBS, one of his primary funders.
- Describes his filmmaking style as "reality fiction".
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