As far as I’m aware, the only work of director Frederick Wiseman I’d ever seen was his black-&-white documentary, “Titicut Follies,” which I watched in a cinema class in college. A bluntly harrowing depiction of the decrepit interiors of a Massachusetts hospital for the criminally insane in the last `60s, it made for deeply unpleasant and unsettling viewing.
“Central Park,” meanwhile, Wiseman’s 1989 documentary feature about – wait for it – Central Park is a different beast entirely. Captured 36 long years ago, the Central Park on display looks more or less the same, although it’s quite assuredly a different city now. The fashions alone are worth noting.
When this film was shot, I would have been freshly sprung from my four years in college in Ohio and interning at SPIN Magazine on West 18th Street. It seems like a lifetime ago, and pretty much is.
It’s not on YouTube and usually can only be viewed via academia, but some enterprising soul recently uploaded it onto a platform called OK. I can’t embed it, as I’m not a member of OK, but you can watch it – for the moment, at least – by clicking right here.
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