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State Legislature
Directed by Frederick Wiseman
Sunday October 19 | 7 pm

Suggested Donation $8.

STATE LEGISLATURE shows the day-to-day activities of the Idaho Legislature during an entire session. Idaho is governed by citizen legislators, not career politicians: they are farmers and ranchers, businessmen and women, lawyers, doctors, sales people, and teachers. Lobbyists, lawmakers and their constituents are seen debating and discussing the concerns of the electorate, on issues that range from violence in schools, mad cow disease and video voyeurism to illegal immigration, secondhand smoke and the deregulation of telephone rates. The film is an example of the achievements, values, constraints and limitations of the democratic process.

“The most important living filmmaker in the U.S. takes a close look at the workings of the Idaho State Legislature with its different committees and chambers. The discussions range over a large variety of issues, most of which have little in common save for the fact that they concern the good people of Idaho, yet one has the impression that all these individuals are talking to one another, that there’s a dialogue, a sense of working at something that’s much bigger than all the legislature’s committees put together, bigger in fact than the state itself – in a word, civilization. This begins with individuals gathering together, and so the film’s opening and closing prayer-session sequences suggest that the legislature as at once a family, a community, and a place of history and therefore of both change and memory. Amazing grace indeed.” –Olaf Möller, Film Comment
Festival Screenings
Berlin International Film Festival, February 2007
HOT DOCS Canadian Documentary Film Festival, April 2007
Buenos Aires International Independent Film Festival, April 2007
Visions du Reel, Switzerland, April 2007 – Winner of the Templeton PrizeWinner of the Templeton PrizeWinner of the Templeton PrizeWinner of the Templeton Prize
Jeonju International Film Festival, South Korea, May 2007
Silverdocs Film Festival, June 2007
Jerusalem International Film Festival, July 2007
International Human Rights Film Festival Nuremberg, October 2007
Flanders International Film Festival-Ghent, October 2007
Lisbon International Documentary Film Festival, October 2007
The Times BFI London Film Festival, October 2007
VIENNALE, October 2007
CPH:DOX International Documentary Film Festival Copenhagen, November 2007
Filmmaker Film Festival, Milan, November 2007
International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam, November 2007
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Nicolas Rapold will be at UnionDocs to help present and talk about the work of Frederick Wiseman…
Nicolas Rapold is an editor at Film Comment and until recently wrote on film for The New York Sun. His article on Frederick Wiseman appeared in the September issue of Sight & Sound. He has also written for The L Magazine, Moving Image Source, and elsewhere. Email: nicolas.rapold@gmail.com