High School
1968, NR, 75 min.
Directed by Frederick Wiseman, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring .

Trained as a lawyer, Frederick Wiseman aims his documentary camera on social institutions and uses its lens as a tool for muckraking. One of America’s most acclaimed documentarians, Wiseman employs a cinema vérité style so observe the relationships between human beings and the bureaucracies that serve them. His two early features in this program hail from 1969, a time ripe for raised consciousness. High School is a stark observation of social conditioning at a large, urban high school.

This article appears in March 22 • 2002.

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Marjorie Baumgarten is a film critic and contributing writer at The Austin Chronicle, where she has worked in many capacities since the paper's founding in 1981. She served as the Chronicle's Film Reviews editor for 25 years.