Wisemania
Wisemania is a multi-year exploration of the works of documentarian Frederick Wiseman, drawing on the collection of more than two dozen 16mm prints the Yale Film Archive acquired from Wiseman’s Zipporah Films in 2024. All screenings are free and open to the public.
Location:
Humanities Quadrangle, Lower Level
320 York Street
New Haven, CT
UPCOMING WISEMANIA SCREENINGS
See our full screening schedule here.
WELFARE (Frederick Wiseman, 1975, 16mm, 167 mins)
2 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 1, 2026
In one of his most acclaimed documentaries, Wiseman takes us into New York’s Waverly Welfare Center, capturing its arcane bureaucracy and quiet despair. The film “feels like the real-life, ensemble-cast version of a Kafka novel” (Alissa Wilkinson), as claimants and case-workers navigate the endless paperwork and the psychology of poverty under a fluorescent glare. The result is as enraging as it is heartbreaking.
MISSILE (Frederick Wiseman, 1988, 16mm, 115 mins)
2 p.m. Sunday, March 1, 2026
If your nuclear anxieties were set off by Dr. Strangelove last month (or Fail Safe last fall), see the real-life foundation for those fears with Missile, Wiseman’s look at the training program for the officers overseeing our intercontinental ballistic missile stockpile. Filmed at Vandenberg Air Force Base, this doc follows officers through classrooms, briefings, psych exams, and simulations, revealing the logic and language of technological warfare.
ZOO (Frederick Wiseman, 1993, 16mm, 130 mins)
2 p.m. Sunday, April 19, 2026
Wiseman spent 42 days filming in Miami’s zoo, revealing the routines and contradictions of captivity and care. While visitors and animals gaze at one another through bars, zookeepers juggle ethical, organizational, and research interests in an environment where human interventions mean life or death. This extraordinary documentary “moves beyond factual meaning to provoke an unsettling existential awareness” (Belinda Smaill).
PAST WISEMANIA SCREENINGS
ASPEN (Frederick Wiseman, 1991, 16mm, 146 mins)
2 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 9, 2025
A tale of two cities, Aspen explores both the jet-setters' glamorous playground and the working-class community that keeps it operating. Wiseman's 25th documentary gives us a gimlet-eyed look at an economic divide that would only deepen in the decades to come, and peppers it with John Denver, a cosmetic surgery seminar, garish displays of bad taste, and some of the most gorgeous scenery on earth. "A study in contrasts, some of them touching, some of them absurd" (Tom Shales). This screening will be followed by a discussion with novelist Stephanie LaCava and Yale's R. John Williams.
CANAL ZONE (Frederick Wiseman, 1977, 16mm, 174 mins)
2 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 5, 2025
Wiseman's first "place" film takes us to the Panama Canal, where U.S. civilian, business, and military personnel attempt to import American suburban life: between bingo games and boxing matches, high schoolers recite the Gettysburg Address and mental health patients watch Spanish-dubbed Abbott and Costello movies while patrol dogs sniff for drugs. With Canal Zone, Wiseman gives us "one of his most wickedly funny films" (Ben Sachs) and "an ingenious cautionary tale" (Frank Rich).
HIGH SCHOOL (Frederick Wiseman, 1968, 16mm, 75 mins)
7 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 18, 2025
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 generational clashes in the classroom is "filthy with the kind of revealing behavior a documentarian can only hope and pray to capture on camera" (A.A. Dowd).