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Welfare
Director: Frederick Wiseman, USA, 1975, 167 minutes
Curated by Haida Paul
Welfare is one of Frederick Wiseman’s most demanding and rewarding
films. Shot in 1975 at a New York City welfare agency, the film
reflects the struggle of welfare workers and clients attempting
to function within the web of institutional laws and regulations
governing their transactions. As with most Wiseman films (such
as Titicut Follies, High School, Juvenile
Court, Law & Order) the venue is institutional and
easily recognizable. The action takes place within that framework
of social mechanism. The camera simply looks and records. The
resulting footage, superbly photographed by William Brayne, exposes
the relentless flow of problems that drive people to seek aid:
unemployment, inadequate housing, addiction, racism, homophobia,
medical and psychiatric disorders, child abuse, and neglect of
the elderly. The needs are overwhelming. The red tape is endless.
Claimants’ responses to the system run the gamut from abject resignation
to enraged antagonism.
A young woman is told by her interviewer that he’s ‘looking after
two and a half million people and that if a couple of thousand
don’t get what’s due them, I’m doing a good job’. The young woman
leaves. A man with a fractured skull heaps racist abuse on a kindly
security officer. Two children play at shooting each other with
umbrellas. A woman wrapped in a huge overcoat suckles her baby.
Beside her, an old man gazes apprehensively at the handful of
forms he holds.
In the early 70s, technical advances made it possible to shoot
synchronized sound documentaries with available light. This enabled
Wiseman to use lightweight equipment, no additional lights, and
a small, unobtrusive crew. He recorded sound in tandem with Brayne
on camera. They used a system of discreet signals to communicate
on who or what the camera should follow. Wiseman’s editing is
brilliant. What emerges is the evocation of endless days spent
standing in queues or waiting in crowded corridors under the relentless
glare of fluorescent lights. The film does not judge welfare workers,
people on welfare, the security staff, or the person who sweeps
up at the end of the day. It is a film that asks the question
‘whose fault is all this?’ Welfare is as sadly relevant
today as when it was made 35 years ago.
Frederick Wiseman is probably one of today’s greatest living
documentary filmmakers. For close to thirty years, thanks to the
Public Broadcast Service (PBS), he has created an exceptional
body of work consisting of thirty full length films devoted primarily
to exploring American institutions. Over time these films have
become a record of the western world.
Early in his career, Wiseman examined institutions – a
hospital, a high school, army basic training, a welfare center,
a police precinct. His approach reveals the profound acknowledged
and unacknowledged conformity and inequality of American society.
Wiseman’s films are also a reflection on democracy.
Curator's Biography
Haida Paul has worked in film and television for over 40 years.
Her passion for the documentary form was ignited by the early
work of Allan King, the Maysles Brothers & Charlotte Zwerin and,
perhaps most significantly, Frederick Wiseman. Over the years
she has collaborated with independent filmmakers from Canada,
India, Britain, the United States, the Philippines, Vietnam, and
Indonesia. Her teaching activities include apprenticeship training
for Directors’ Guild of Canada, workshops and seminars with
Cineworks Canada, sessional lecturer at Simon Fraser University,
Emily Carr University, and the University of British Columbia.
Read the essay: Reality
Sandwiches
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