At the proposal of UPF’s Department of Communication, directed by professor José Fernández Cavia, at its session held yesterday 17 February, the UPF Board of Governors approved granting the title of doctor honoris causa to the American documentary filmmaker, Frederick Wiseman. The investiture ceremony is scheduled to be held on 3 May.

“The awarding of a doctor honoris causa to Frederick Wiseman is not just the recognition of a bold career that has always been a reference in film studies, but also the reaffirmation of Pompeu Fabra University’s commitment to strengthening art as a means of research and whistleblowing”, said Fernández Cavia.

Frederick Wiseman (Boston, 1930) began his career in 1967 and is still active as one of the most prestigious documentarians in the history of filmmaking. His contribution to increasing cinematographic and sociological knowledge is already endorsed by numerous individual awards (including the Golden Lion in Venice for lifetime achievement in 2014 or the titles of French Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters in 2000 and Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2001).

His prolific work can be considered a research tool into social reality

Wiseman’s audiovisual production can be considered a fully-fledged research career. He has been able to portray tenets of Althusser, Foucault and Fromm with the insight and precision made possible by the moving image.

Throughout more than 40 films, all greatly present at international festivals, Frederick Wiseman has become a historical agent of the first order intervening politically through whistleblowing in and attention to such a broad scope as health care, public housing, the army, museums or scientific research, always committed to prioritizing the voice of the workers and other participants of the institutions over a possible narrative voice.

From the sharp look at a psychiatric institution in his first film, Titicut Follies (1967), which was banned for decades and is found in most canonical lists of the genre, to the portrait of one of the most ethnically diverse communities in the United States in his last work, In Jackson Heights (2015), Wiseman has maintained a high degree of political and social commitment focusing thematically on recording the processes and institutions that govern our society.

Among his works, those devoted to education are of particular relevance to us: High School (1968, part of the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress of the United States since 1991) and High School II (1994), both dedicated to secondary education, and At Berkeley (2013), whose attentive radiography of the running of one of the world’s most prestigious schools is a valuable work for any member of an academic community.

Academic and professional recognition and a commitment to documentaries

UPF pays this tribute as much from the field of communication or film as from its conception of the university institution. In the first case, UPF has stood out for its promotion of and commitment to documentary films, especially through the master’s degree programme in Creative Documentary, an international benchmark centre of thought and action around real film.

Fernández-Cavia continued by saying that “Wiseman’s relationship with UPF goes back a long way, as far as his collaboration concerning the foundation of the master’s degree in Creative Documentary, under the direction of professor Jordi Balló, a training programme that has become a benchmark in the promotion and analysis of this genre”. 

Since its creation the master’s degree has invited renowned filmmakers such as Joaquim Jorda, Jean-Louis Comolli, Victor Kossakovsky and José Luis Guerín and has prompted a wave of young Catalan and international documentarians. It was indeed Frederick Wiseman who launched the classes of the first edition of the master’s degree in 1998 as a declaration of intent of the influence it should exert among young filmmakers.

Regarding the second case, the mainstreaming of Frederick Wiseman’s documentary works forms a mosaic that is not only of interest to sociologists or anthropologists, but to any member of society, and is especially appealing to the university understood as a cluster of knowledge and a critical eye on all sectors in which its students work.

Coinciding with Pompeu Fabra University’s awarding of this honoris causa, Filmoteca de Catalunya has plans to dedicate the month of May to showing the works of this world referent and the North American documentary. Frederick Wiseman has been invited on 3 May at 8.00 pm to present his own cycle consisting of a selection of ten films chosen together with this iconic filmmaker.