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Frederick Wiseman, a master of immersive documentaries, dies at 96
Frederick Wiseman directed about 50 documentaries over nearly six decades, focusing on institutions and earning numerous lifetime achievement awards.
- Family and Zipporah Films announced Monday that Frederick Wiseman died on Feb. 16, 2026 at his home in Cambridge, Massachusetts at age 96.
- Starting with Titicut Follies in 1967, Wiseman began making documentaries in the mid-1960s and continued through 2023, producing roughly 50 films.
- Known for a hands-on process, Wiseman directed, produced and edited with tiny film crews, often serving as sound engineer, and shot 170 hours of footage for films up to six hours long.
- His family said a private funeral for immediate family will take place, and survivors include two sons, David and Eric, and three grandchildren; they asked supporters to back local PBS affiliates or independent bookstores.
- With an honorary Oscar , Wiseman's films are preserved in the U.S. Library of Congress's National Film Registry, and a 2025 retrospective at Film at Lincoln Center celebrated his influence, with Errol Morris saying, `I wish I could be more like him`.
157 Articles
157 Articles
Remembering Frederick Wiseman: the filmmaker who changed documentary cinema forever
Frederick Wiseman, who died yesterday at the age of 96, was an American filmmaker whose carefully observed works changed documentary cinema forever, shedding light on institutions, individuals and everyday life. Born into a Jewish family in Boston in 1930, Wiseman studied law at Yale and then taught law at Boston University. At the same time, he was fascinated by documentary cinema, producing The Cool World in 1963, a film directed by Shirley Cl…
The Post and Courier
UpstractFrederick Wiseman, 96, Penetrating Documentarian of Institutions, Dies
Frederick Wiseman, a director whose rigorously objective explorations of social and cultural institutions constitute one of the more revered bodies of work in American documentary filmmaking, died Monday at his home in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He was 96.
He went where society happens. To the death of the great American documentary filmmaker Frederick Wiseman
The photographer and the producer remember the filmmaker, who died on Monday, February 16, as a man with rare natural and motor energy.
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