Virtual Sunday Matinee  6/23

 (Virtual @ the Write Brain Theater (2pm-4:30pm EST)

After a long week of all-night virtual movie marathons & double-features, we’re slowing thing down in the style of a Manhattan matinee, with today’s Virtual Sunday Matinee of Frederick Wiseman’s sprawling 2.5 hour long cinema verite masterpiece Welfare (1976). Wiseman made a name for himself with his simplistic approach to form, but complex sense of the cinematic language when it comes to his themes. Juvenile Court, Central Park, & other titles by Wiseman present a deceptively minimalist approach to the form, but all is not what it seems. Wiseman allows his audience members to explore the landscapes he presents themselves, using a style that is in some ways without style, being a prototype to the later no-wave approach to filmmaking with the believe that a lot can be said with a little. This muted voice awakens a sleeping giant in the viewer, allowing for them to do self reflection in a Brechtian way, as if the lens is nothing more than a window into a different slice of America’s culture. In this film, Wiseman tackles New York City’s overly complicated & broken welfare system by examining the various people from different racial backgrounds that intersect in the overflowing offices where the benefits are given. A dense piece of work, this piece of cinema was groundbreaking in allowing the subjects of the film to tell their own stories, both from the people in need of help to the government services overworked, overloaded, & another cog in the wheel of a Kafkesque system. The show begins at 2 pm EST.