Veteran filmmaker, Frederick Wiseman, widely considered the pre-eminent documentarian to emerge from the 1960s, has always said he considers his approach closer to that of a novelist rather than a director.

Over six decades, Wiseman has made a total of forty-three documentaries in his storied fifty-six-year career, on subjects ranging from a hospital for the criminally insane (his seminal 1967 début, Titicut Follies), to the American Ballet Theatre (Ballet, 1995), and an Austin gym (Boxing Gym, 2010). Purely observatory, these works are devoid of voiceover or re-enactments or other now-standard techniques. Perhaps no documentary filmmaker has offered a more comprehensive examination of contemporary America and its issues.