Wisemania Film Series: High School

High School (Frederick Wiseman, 1968, 16mm, 75 mins)

Structured as a typical day at Philadelphia’s Northeast High School, Wiseman’s second film is “savagely comic” (David Denby) as it excoriates the conformity enforced through public education in the era. (“I didn’t mean to be individualistic,” one student apologizes.) This observational exploration of a clash between generations struggling for control is “filthy with the kind of revealing behavior a documentarian can only hope and pray to capture on camera” (A.A. Dowd). 16mm print from the Yale Film Archive.

“Wisemania” is a multi-year exploration of the works of documentarian Frederick Wiseman.