Documentary details demands on New York library system
Libraries are no longer — if they ever really were — simple book repositories passively waiting for patrons to check out a couple of volumes.
“Ex Libris: New York Public Library,” the latest documentary from Frederick Wiseman, depicts a massive system wrestling with 21st-century demands while maintaining traditional services as best it can.
The movie will screen Thursday and Sunday at the Wexner Center for the Arts.
A resident of the Boston area, Wiseman, 87, doesn’t use the New York Public Library — or many other libraries, for that matter.
Growing up, he told Vanity Fair during an interview published last month, he used the library a lot.
“But that was at a time when the library had a more passive role, in the sense that you went to take out a book, or maybe sit there for a while, or maybe go do some research,” said Wiseman, who was unavailable for an interview for this story. “But I was absolutely amazed to discover the variety and the depth and the extent of programs that the (New York Public Library) offered during the process of making the film.”
The three-hour-plus movie, in which no subject is identified and no person interviewed, chronicles a 92-branch system with myriad challenges that its administrators constantly debate: Do they buy e-books or printed books? Bestsellers or reference volumes? How do they reach the 3 million New Yorkers who don’t have internet service in their homes? How do they find the money to do all of this and still keep the lights on?
And what do they do, if anything, about homeless people who find temporary shelter in the library?
Wiseman captures the interaction of the library with its patrons, whether scanning the crowds and the packed author talks (Elvis Costello and Patti Smith are featured), following scholars in hushed fineliterature rooms or watching art students learn about the photo archives that they’re encouraged to use to find models for their works.
And every branch, every community, presents a different set of needs. A job fair takes place in one branch; seniors wriggle during a “dancersize” class in another. Chinese-language newspapers are pored over in Chinatown.
“As the movie ended up, I think there were 13 different locations,” Wiseman told Vanity Fair. “But from my point of view, at least, what goes on in those different locations are thematically connected because you see the diversity of programs and activities that the library offers.”
During his 50-year career, Wiseman has made 45 movies, most of them feature-length documentaries. He often focuses his camera on institutions and the people inside them.
This week, viewers also can see Wiseman’s first movie: “Titicut Follies” (1967), a look at the treatment of the inmates at the State Prison for the Criminally Insane in Bridgewater, Massachusetts.
The movie will screen Sunday at the Gateway Film Center.
“Titicut Follies” examined the conditions at the prison, where inmates were harassed by the staff, force-fed and left naked in bare cells.
“The inmates at Bridgewater were treated very badly, by and large,” Wiseman told National Public Radio in April. “But many of them had committed the most outrageous crimes imaginable.”
The movie, which has the power to shake audiences, holds a distinct claim to fame: It was banned by a Massachusetts court six weeks after its debut on the grounds that it invaded the privacy of the patients.
The prohibition was lifted in 1991, but “Titicut Follies” remains the only film banned for reasons other than obscenity.
“Titicut Follies” Gateway Film Center, 1550 N. High St. 5 p.m. Sunday $10.75 614-247-4433, www. gatewayfilmcenter.org