Event time:
Sunday, February 1, 2026 - 2:00pm
Location:
Humanities Quadrangle, L01
320 York Street
New Haven, CT
06511
Event description:
Yale Film Archive: Wisemania Film Series
1975 | Directed by Frederick Wiseman | 16mm | 167 mins
In one of his most acclaimed documentaries, Wiseman takes us into New York’s Waverly Welfare Center, capturing its arcane bureaucracy and quiet despair. The film “feels like the real-life, ensemble-cast version of a Kafka novel” (Alissa Wilkinson), as claimants and case-workers navigate the endless paperwork and the psychology of poverty under a fluorescent glare. The result is as enraging as it is heartbreaking. 16mm print from the Yale Film Archive.