Check out the documentary film “At Berkeley”. The film will be showed for the first time among the China alumni community on the coming Saturday April 26th in Shanghai during the charity poker tournament.

Check out the documentary film “At Berkeley”. The film will be showed for the first time among the China alumni community on the coming Saturday April 26th in Shanghai during the charity poker tournament.  You can watch it here.

Name: At Berkeley

Producer/Director: Frederick Wiseman

Genres: Documentary

Runtime: 244 minutes (Yes, 4 hours!)

Language: English

Release Date: First on September 2nd, 2013 (according to IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3091552/)

Production Co: Zipporah Films 

(From Independent Lens on PBS (Public Broadcasting Service): http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/)

The latest film from legendary filmmaker Frederick Wiseman, At Berkeley is a revealing four-hour documentary about the University of California at Berkeley, the oldest and most prestigious member of a ten campus public education system and one of the finest research and teaching facilities in the world. Eschewing narration and standard interviews, the film takes viewers from faculty meetings to classrooms, from financial aid seminars to research laboratories, to show the myriad aspects of university life. Filmed during the fall 2010 semester, Wiseman reveals the administration’s struggles as it faces drastic budget cuts imposed by the State of California. Through this wide-ranging approach, both sweeping and intimate, Wiseman shows how a major American university is administered, revealing the complex relationships among its various constituencies — students, faculty, administrators, alumni, the City of Berkeley, the State of California and the federal government. The film also looks closely at Berkeley’s intellectual and social mission, its obligation to the state and to the larger ideals of higher education.

New York Times review:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/08/movies/at-berkeley-a-documentary-by-frederick-wiseman.html?_r=0

Frederick Wiseman on At Berkeley:

My film about the University of California at Berkeley presents a strong and accomplished administration and faculty working hard to maintain — in the face of a severe financial crisis — the standards and integrity of a great public university, which is at the service of highly intelligent and diverse students. It was a privilege to film at Berkeley.

The film is consistent with my efforts to make documentaries about as many aspects of human behavior as I can. I think it is just as important for the filmmaker to show people of intelligence, character, tolerance, and goodwill hard at work as it is to make movies

about the failures, insensitivities, and cruelties of others. At Berkeley is an illustration of this idea.

At Berkeley is the 38th film in my series about contemporary institutions. I spent twelve weeks at Berkeley and shot 250 hours of material. The crew consisted of myself and two others. No events are staged and there is no artificial lighting. The editing of the film took 14 months spread out over a two-and-a-half-year period. The film presented a particularly interesting editing problem since the diversity of material was much greater than in any

of my previous films. A public university is a complex organism made up of many parts — students, faculty, administrators, staff, police, alumni, politicians, and the community in which it is located. In the editing I had to try and find a way to suggest these interrelationships, and their complexity, while simultaneously giving a sense of the entire institution.

About the Filmmaker Frederick Wiseman:

Independent filmmaker Frederick Wiseman has directed 40 films since 1967, 38 of them documentaries, that seek to portray ordinary human experience in a wide variety of contemporary social institutions. His subjects have included a state hospital for the criminally insane, a high school, a welfare center, juvenile court, a boxing gym, ballet companies in New York and Paris, Central Park, a racetrack, and a Parisian cabaret theater. Wiseman has directed two fiction features, Seraphita’s Diary (1982) and The Last Letter (Independent Lens, 2005). Wiseman has worked in the theater, directing two plays in Paris, including an adaptation of The Last Letter (the English version of La Dernière Lettre) at the Theater for a New Audience in New York. The French publisher, Gallimard, and the Museum of Modern Art, New York, jointly published the book, Frederick Wiseman, which offers a comprehensive overview of his work through a series of original essays by distinguished critics and artists.

Wiseman received his BA from Williams College and his LLB from Yale Law School. He has received honorary doctorates from Bowdoin College, Princeton University, and Williams College, among others. He is a MacArthur Fellow, a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, and an Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He has won numerous awards, including four Emmys. He is also the recipient of the Career Achievement Award from the Los Angeles Film Society (2013); the George Polk Career Award (2006); and the American Society of Cinematographers Distinguished Achievement Award (2006), among many others.

Wikipedia entry:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Wiseman

The story behind the scene to get the film to alumni in China:

There is no way to watch the film “online”. No way to download. No way to streaming. The only way to get the film is to purchase DVDs from Zipporah Films, Inc. (http://www.zipporah.com/films/42), a sales & distribution company founded by the film director Frederick Wiseman, and the DVDs can only be shipped to addresses within the United States and Canada.

Thanks to the collective efforts from the Berkeley alumni community in China, we managed to ask an alumnus to order and receive the DVD in the U.S. when he was travelling there, then bring the DVD back to Shanghai and hand over to Ann Hsu.  Please join the Charity Poker Tournament in Shanghai on Saturday April 26th afternoon.  We will be showing the documentary film “At Berkeley” along the poker tournament.