Frederick Wiseman’s Primate

In famed documentarian Frederick Wiseman?s fascinating and controversial Primate (1974, 105 min., 16 mm ) filmed at the Yerkes Regional Primate Research Center in Atlanta, scientists conduct behavioral and other experiments and research on a variety of primates.

Wiseman uses a cinema verite style, although he makes no claims to objectivity. He interprets the subject through his filming and editing choices and then lets the viewer make his/her own judgments. ?I think the phrase ?reality fictions? is a better description of what I?m doing than documentary. For Primate I filmed events that existed in so-called life, but structured them in a way that has no relationship to the order of time in which they actually occurred ? and created a form that is totally fictional.?