High School

Filmed at a large urban high school in Philadelphia, High School documents how the school system not only exists to pass on “facts” but also transmits social values from one generation to another. High School presents a series of formal and informal encounters between teachers, students, parents, and administrators through which the ideology and values of the school emerge. An NYFF7 selection. 

“Seeing High School for the first time was one of those formative movie-watching experiences that I’ll never shake. For years after first seeing it, I resolved to put a 16mm camera on my shoulder, go out into the world, and just film what I saw. For me, the purity of Wiseman’s approach was cinema at its highest—the true fulfillment of Lumiere’s promise. Of course, the genius of Wiseman’s films has a lot to do with how constructed they are. They simulate raw life, but, like life, they’re as packed with detail and as dense with narrative as any novel.