Doors 3:30p
Program 4:00p
Tickets $20
Sep 13, 2026 at 4:00 pm
Wiseman’s New York:
Public vs. Private — Closing Panel
With Genevieve Yue, K. Austin Collins and Mariana Mogilevich
UnionDocs
352 Onderdonk Ave
Ridgewood, NY
Frederick Wiseman’s films are often understood to be institutional studies, but within those spaces the distinctions between the private and public spheres, as well as their interactions, have been less examined. Across his New York work, the boundaries between public and private life are continually being drawn, crossed, and renegotiated, from hospitals and welfare offices to libraries, parks, schools, and cultural spaces.
Closing out Wiseman’s New York, this conversation turns to the structures behind what we see on screen. How did public and private funding, partnerships, access, and exhibition shape the films Wiseman was able to make and the New York he was able to document? And what can these shifting relationships tell us about the changing idea of public life in the city itself?
Join Genevieve Yue, Kameron Austin Collins & Mariana Mogilevich for a closing conversation that looks beyond Wiseman’s celebrated observational method to the networks of money, access, ownership, and public responsibility running through his New York films.
Watch the conversation between Presenter1, Presenter2 and Presenter 3 on the UnionDocs’ Membership hub.
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.
Mariana Mogilevich is editor in chief of Urban Omnibus. A writer and historian of architecture and urbanism, she is the author of The Invention of Public Space: Designing for Inclusion in LIndsay’s New York (2020).
Critic, programmer and New Yorker crossword mastermind K. Austin Collins is the author of an upcoming book-length essay on Wiseman’s Domestic Violence as a part of Fireflies’ Decadent series.
From the Event
