Program 6:30p

OFFSITE
Anthology Film Archives
32 2nd Ave
NY 10003

We’re delighted to co-present a special screening of Frederick Wiseman’s Welfare (1975) at Anthology Film Archives! This event is part of our 10 day program,  Wiseman’s New York, where we invite participants into an immersive survey and set of seminars on Wiseman’s New York films alongside visits to the institutions, neighborhoods, and civic spaces they document.

Over the course of his six-decade career, the late, great filmmaker Frederick Wiseman returned to New York more than any single location. He made nine films in the city. In early works like Hospital (1969) and Welfare (1975), he addressed the plight of some of the city’s most vulnerable residents. Later films show a city in the midst of transition, including creeping gentrification in In Jackson Heights (2015) and a public library system redefining its purpose in an era of digitization in Ex Libris (2017).

Welfare (1975) shows the nature and complexity of the welfare system in sequences illustrating the staggering diversity of problems that constitute welfare: housing, unemployment, divorce, medical and psychiatric problems, abandoned and abused children, and the elderly. These issues are presented in a context where welfare workers as well as clients struggle to cope with and interpret the laws and regulations that govern their work and life.

Come through!

Program

1975, 167 MINUTES, B&W

Bios

Genevieve Yue is an associate professor of culture and media at The New School. She is an independent programmer and the author of Girl Head: Feminism and Film Materiality (2020) and Trains, which will be available in fall 2026.