"City Hall" The "ideal" form immortalized by Frederick Wiseman

Summary of "City Hall"

Boston, a metropolis where diverse races and cultures coexist, is led by Mayor Martin Walsh, a working-class man with Irish immigrant roots. In the midst of the division that plagues America in 2018-19, the mayor said, "We can't solve the problems of the United States here. But if one city changes, that impact will change the country." Through the challenges faced by the mayor and city officials, the possibility of a "City Hall for the Citizens" becomes clear.

Index

• As an entry model for the world's leading documentary filmmaker, director Frederick Wiseman
• Direct Cinema style: letting the footage speak for itself
• The "ideal" form that was imprinted on the film by Martin Walsh, the mayor of Boston at the time.

As an entry model for the world's leading documentary filmmaker, director Frederick Wiseman

Born on January 1, 1930, director Frederick Wiseman, who will soon be 95 years old and hails from Boston, Massachusetts, continues to exude an undeniable presence as the longest serving and world-class documentary filmmaker. In his latest work, " The Blissful Restaurant/Three Michelin Star Troisgros ," released in 2023, he turned his camera to one of the most famous restaurants in the French cuisine world, Troisgros, which was founded in 1930, the same year as Wiseman's birth, but this is a kind of extra episode in his filmography (although it is a masterpiece). He is basically a social cineaste who has been critically capturing the reality of his native America for over half a century. For example, a special screening held at Theater Image Forum in Tokyo from September 21 to October 11 this year (2024) was titled " Frederick Wiseman Masterpiece Selection: Changing America ."

Since his legendary debut film "Titicut Follies" in 1967, which captured the daily life of the Massachusetts House of Correction, a state prison for mentally ill criminals, director Wiseman has released nearly 50 documentary films to date (a total of 44 are currently available for screening). Among them, we would like to recommend his recent work "City City Hall," released in 2020 at the age of 90, as an entry model for those who have never experienced his work - the perfect first film to introduce you to Wiseman. As the title suggests, the film documents the unique activities of local governments in one of the largest cities on the East Coast of the United States, focusing on the new Boston City Hall, completed in 1968. The film was shot in the fall of 2018 and winter of 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic. The film's world premiere was held in the Out of Competition section of the 77th Venice International Film Festival in September 2020, and it was selected as the number one film of the top ten of 2020 by the French film magazine Cahiers du Cinema.

"City Hall" © 2020 Puritan Films, LLC – All Rights Reserved

Boston is where Wiseman was born, but he didn't choose Boston out of all the government offices because it was his birthplace. When he was deciding which city hall to photograph, Wiseman read a newspaper article about famous American mayors. He then sent out offers to six cities, and the only one to respond was Boston's mayor, Martin Walsh, who was in office at the time.

Martin Walsh was born in Boston in 1967 and comes from a working-class family of Irish descent. He ran for mayor of Boston as a Democrat and was elected in 2013. He was then re-elected in 2017. After serving a total of eight years in office, he retired as mayor on March 22, 2021. He then served as the 29th Secretary of Labor in the Joe Biden administration, but resigned on March 11, 2023. This was the first time a cabinet member had resigned in the Biden administration, which was a hot topic. He is currently away from politics and is serving as executive director of the National Hockey League Players Association (NHLPA), the labor union for National Hockey League (NHL) players.

Direct Cinema style: letting the footage speak for itself