High School (1968 film)
High School is a 1968 American documentary film shot by Frederick Wiseman that shows a typical day for a group of students at Northeast High School in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It was one of the first direct cinema documentaries. It was shot over five weeks in March and April 1968. The film was not shown in Philadelphia at the time of its release, because of Wiseman's concerns over what he called "vague talk" of a lawsuit.
The film was released in November 1968 by Zipporah Films, Wiseman's distribution company. High School has aired on PBS. Wiseman distributes his work through Zipporah Films, which rents them to high schools, colleges, and libraries on a five-year long-term lease. High School was selected in 1991 for preservation in the National Film Registry.
In 1994, Wiseman released High School II, a second documentary on high school, based on Central Park East Secondary School in New York City.Reception and interpretation
Film critic David Denby, writing in the New York Review of Books, described High School as "a savagely comic portrait" of an urban high school in a period of emerging social unrest:
