By Tammy Scileppi
For nearly 50 years, documentary filmmaker Frederick Wiseman has captured the drama of the everyday by simply flicking on his camera.
Since 1967, when he directed his first film, “Titicut Follies”—a scathing condemnation of how inmates where treated at the Bridgewater (Mass.) State Hospital for the criminally insane—Wiseman has made a career out of focusing on institutions that he believes “are important for the functioning of society,” such as hospitals, police departments and high schools.
Now Wiseman has turned his camera on Queens with his take on “the new face of immigrant America.”
“In Jackson Heights,” currently in post-production, was shot last summer over an eight-week period. The Boston-based filmmaker, who turned 85 in January, said he picked the neighborhood because it is a community of new immigrants.
“It’s a bit like being on the Lower East Side of New York at the end of the 19th century,” Wiseman said. “There are people living here from South and Central America, and from all over Asia—East Asia, Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan, India, Tibet—and they’re all living side by side in reasonable harmony.”
Wiseman was thrilled to have an opportunity to make this film about the day-to-day lives of these people, and to share their ordinary experiences at work, in the stores they run or shop in, and in their schools, as well as in the various places where they like to meet, like restaurants, cafes and beauty parlors.
Wiseman thinks that like many Queens neighborhoods Jackson Heights is evolving and changing for the better.
In some ways, the film seems to reflect that fact, and is therefore quite relevant since there are so many New Yorkers and tourists who are familiar with Jackson Heights and often visit to browse and shop for authentic ethnic items, like those sold in Little India.
And Jackson Heights is considered Queens eating at its best. There’s no shortage of international eateries, serving up down-home dishes along the area’s main drags of Roosevelt Avenue and Northern Boulevard.
“In Jackson Heights” is Wiseman’s ninth film shot in New York. It is scheduled for a fall release and will air on PBS, one of Wiseman’s primary funders, sometime next year.
From 120 hours of footage, the filmmaker is currently whittling down his documentary through an intense editing process, until the finished product emerges.
Skillfully capturing the feel and flavor of the neighborhood and its dynamic vibe, he chooses all kinds of subjects that his audiences can relate to—poor, rich and middle-class people—in different situations and in a variety of locations.
An integral part of his signature filmmaking style is the lack of interviews, narration, and added music or lighting.
Explaining the driving force behind these films, Wiseman said he’s trying to give people “a sense of contemporary life as it’s lived and expressed through these institutions, which are common in all societies.”
Which comes at a price.
If all goes well and the crowd-funding through Kickstarter is a success, the documentary will be completed on schedule and introduce Jackson Heights to his longtime fans and new audiences.
“I had a great time making this film. The shooting was, as always, a great adventure. I met people from many different cultures whose life experiences were very different than mine,” Wiseman said.
Check out a rough-cut sneak peek of the film at https://vimeo.com/
