Trailer

Synopsis

Jackson Heights, Queens, New York City, 167 languages are spoken, is one of the most ethnically and culturally diverse communities in the World. The people live in Jackson Heights, in their cultural, racial and ethnic diversity, are representative of the new wave of immigrants to America. The subject of the film is the daily life of the people in this community and the conflict between maintaining ties to traditions of the countries of origin and the need to learn and adapt to American ways and values.

Director

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  Frederick Wiseman
  

  National Gallery (2014)
  At Berkeley (2013)
  Crazy Horse (2011)
  Boxing Gym (2010)
  La Danse—Le Ballet de l’Opéra de Paris (2009)

  I have, since I was a child, always been fascinated by the variety of human behavior. As an alleged adult making documentary films has been, for me, the perfect work. I get to not only record but to try to think about and organize my experience. I have been making an institutional series without any precise definition of institution. Sometimes the subjects of the films are the activities within a single building, sometimes a group of contiguous buildings, and occasionally a small or large geographic area. In Jackson Height falls into the latter category and is the third in a group of films I have made about communities (the others being Aspen and Belefast, Maine). Just as I have no precise definition of an institution I have no strict definition of a community.
  Some films are in part defined and limited to the buildings they take place in some by a geographical territory.
  What I do is draw a ragged line around a building, group of buildings or a place and say that anything that happens within the boundaries of that arbitrarily selected line is fit for inclusion in the film. Outside the line is another film.
  The choice of this kind of filmmaking has made it possible to observe human activity and behavior in a very wide range of limited contexts and encounters. Editing is an opportunity to try and find a form and home for the experience of making the film.
  For In Jackson Height I drew an imaginary line around part of the Borough of Queens (one of the five boroughs of New York City) that is known as Jackson Heights. In Queens this is called a neighborhood and the actual boundaries are imprecise. 167 languages are spoken in Jackson Heights. There are communities of people from every country in South and Central America as well as large groups of people from Pakistan, Bangladesh, India, Thailand, Nepal and Tibet. They live together with the descendants of earlier immigrations to America-Italian, Jewish and Irish. The area is a true American ‘melting pot’ reminiscent of the Lower East Side of New York City at the end of the 19th century.
  The shooting method was to walk around filming events in the street, going into businesses (clothing stores, laundromats, bakeries, restaurants, supermarkets), religious institutions (mosques, temples, churches) and collecting sequences and shots that together totaled 120 hours of rushes. When I started I had no idea what the themes, point of view or length would be.
  The film emerged from nine weeks of shooting and ten months of editing. In the editing there is a four way conversation going on between (1) my memory of the place; (2) the record of that memory as retained in the rushes; (3) my general experience and (4) the editing process where I try to understand what is going on in an individual sequence, choose and edit the material I want to use and discover visual and thematic connections between the sequences. The film finds its form in that conversation and represents what I learned from the experience of making the film.

Review

A leader of the American Direct Cinema, Frederick Wiseman has no word with his voice in this documentary, Jackson Heights, but in which there is a myriad of different voices. It does not really sound the First World pop music, but the world music on the street full of people. Jackson Heights doesn't belong to the mainstream white society. And its inhabitants are in the face with the issues in the modern society with sexual minority small tenants immigrant workers' wage, labor, environment and citizenship, traffic problem, urban environment, problems of the aged etc., like in any other places in the world.
A variety of debates regarding those issues in different community centers, coffee shops, and hair salons, contain the real Jackson Heights' stories.
It is the communication, debate and fight of right that are the true virtue to sustain Jackson Heights. Its various landscapes result from the self-motivated city with the history of the inhabitants who have communicated and fought for their rights. Jackson Heights is so lively to keep this tradition of the communities as wisdom. They talk about their rights in the past, the present and the future, therefore they could not hesitate to solve lots problems. The records about the city are important to teach us the history and the rights of its inhabitants who continue to meet each other and fight and in order to make their space better. The age-old wisdom from Jackson Heights says that a city is built from the experiences and fights that the inhabitants themselves have gone through and that they are the arms for us who are in the face of the problems in the modern society. [Chai Hee-sook]

Credits

• Director, Producer, Editor, Sound  Frederick Wiseman
• Cinematographer  John Davey

Contribution / World Sales

• Contribution / World Sales  Zipporah Films
• Phone  1 617 576 3603
• E-mail  info@zipporah.com
• Website  http://www.zipporah.com