AT BERKELEY

RELEASED 2013, 244 MINUTES, COLOR

The University of California at Berkeley, the oldest and most prestigious member of a ten campus public education system, is also one of the finest research and teaching facilities in the world. The film, AT BERKELEY, shows the major aspects of university life, its intellectual and social mission, its obligation to the state and to larger ideas of higher education, as well as illustrates how decisions are made and implemented by the administration in collaboration with its various constituencies.

In AT BERKELEY we witness the autumn 2010 semester at a university in crisis, yet thriving. Mr. Wiseman uses the institution’s settings—the meetings, classes and protests—as stages to play out its multifaceted drama of people and ideas.

- Nicolas Rapold, New York Times

It’s a state-of-the-nation masterwork, a vitally important piece of work, and should be seen by as many people as possible.

-Oliver Lyttleton, The Playlist

One of Wiseman’s best, a summation of sorts of a career’s principled filmmaking.

-Leslie Felperin, Variety

Frederick Wiseman’s AT BERKELEY isn’t only a study of the contemporary American university, but, like all of the filmmaker’s best documentaries, a wide-ranging inquiry into the larger institutions and contradictions that define life in the United States.

-Andrew Schenker, Slant