As revered for his brilliant Brechtian documentaries as he is notorious for his control freak tendencies, Fredrick Wiseman loosened the vice grip on his filmic catalog late last year. That surprise move has lead to a boon for followers of his work. No more waiting for blue moon screenings at museums or festivals. No more scouring closed stacks or holding out hope for rarefied inter-library loans in order to view slices of his sizeable cinematic corpus. Twenty-three titles are now available to the general public for purchase in dvd form. Sales so far appear to be robust and in celebration of the windfall the canny folks over at Not Coming to a Theater Near You have been devouring the catalog in earnest. Over a dozen reviews posted and more presumably on the way. The levels of comment and insight are high, particularly in Leo Goldsmith’s parsing of Primate. Do yourself a favor and spend some time perusing the primer and then cruise over to Zipporah Films central and empty the wallet.
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