Tribute to Frederick Wiseman

Hospital (United States, 1970, 84′)

Italian subtitles

Wednesday 7 October, 9 p.m., Cinema Fratelli Marx, Groucho Screen, Corso Belgio, 53

In collaboration with Filmmaker Festival.

On Wednesday 7 October at 9 p.m. at Cinema Fratelli Marx, Job Film Days, in collaboration with Filmmaker Festival, presents Hospital by Frederick Wiseman. Filmed inside Metropolitan Hospital Center, New York’s largest hospital, the film follows medical staff through their daily activities, as well as patients from different social backgrounds. Hospital is one of the early works of the great documentary filmmaker Frederick Wiseman, who died on 16 February 2026.

Introduction by Luca Mosso (Director, Filmmaker Festival).

Admission: tickets required.

International title: Hospital
Original title: Hospital
Director, edit: Frederick Wiseman
Photography: William Brayne
Sound: Dick Vorisek
Production: Osti Films

Hospital is one of the first movies by Frederick Wiseman, documentary cinema giant to whom Job Film Days pays homage, honoring him a few months after his passing. Filmed inside the Metropolitan Hospital Center, the largest hospital in New York, the movie follows the medical staff in the various daily activities alongside patients from diverse social backgrounds, the majority of whom are poor and marginalized. With his unique listening and observing style, destined to become his most recognizable poetic signature, Wiseman goes into the locations using the images to speak, avoiding the usage of the offstage voice and of the interviews. What emerges is a vivid portrait of labour, often developed in emergency situations, led by doctors, nurses, police officers, social assistants, criticizing an overloaded public system that makes exceedingly difficult to manage operations.

Frederick Wiseman. Director, producer, editor, actor, law graduate, his cinema career began in the sixties, almost exclusively focusing on production of documentaries by which he explores the U.S.A.’s matters and institutions yet occasionally crossing into France to investigate others. In 1963, he produced The Cool World by Shirly Clarke, one of the masterpieces of the new American cinema. In 1967, he directed his first long feature film, Titicut Follies, shot in a psychiatric hospital in Massachusetts, launching a filmography spanning sixty years. 

Partial filmography: Titicut Follies (doc., 1967), High School (doc., 1968), Law and Order (doc., 1969), Hospital (doc., 1970), Juvenile Court (doc., 1973), Primate (doc., 1974), Welfare (doc., 1975), Meat (doc., 1976), Model (doc., 1981), The Store (doc., 1983), Deaf (doc., 1986), Central Park (doc., 1990), Zoo (doc., 1993), Ballet (doc., 1995), La Comédie-française ou L’amour joué (doc., 1996), Public Housing (doc., 1997), Belfast, Maine (doc., 1999), La dernière lettre (2002), La danse (doc., 2009), At Berkeley (doc., 2013), National Gallery (doc., 2014), In Jackson Heights (doc., 2015), Ex Libris (doc., 2017), Monrovia, Indiana (doc., 2018), City Hall (doc., 2020), Un couple (2022), Menus-plaisirs – Les Troisgros (doc., 2023).