Sunday 18 December 2005, 15.00

Frederick Wiseman, USA 1968, 75’

Shot in a mainstream, white, middle-class high school in Philadelphia, High School reveals the dominant ideologies of America in 1968 and how they were manifested and manipulated by the chief institution within the country’s education system. Frederick Wiseman has remarked about the film that ‘the announced values are democracy, trust, sensitivity, understanding, openness, innovation – all of the wonderful words we all subscribe to. But the practice is rigidity, authoritarianism, obedience, do as you’re told, don’t challenge’. Such sentiments must have seemed especially pertinent at the time, and their depiction in High School remains remarkably relevant today.

Tate Modern  Starr Auditorium
£4, booking recommended

    

This event is related to the Jeff Wall: Photographs 1978-2004 exhibition