Frederick Wiseman (born 1930) was an American documentary filmmaker whose "fly-on-the-wall" films revealed what happens in a hospital, school, meat-packing plant, police department, modeling agency, department store, zoo, and other public institutions. Many of his films focused public attention on problems in the places he portrayed.

Frederick Wiseman was born in Massachusetts on January 1, 1930. He graduated from Williams College and Yale Law School. Wiseman was a graduate fellow at Harvard for a year and was then drafted into the army. He worked for a short time as an assistant to the attorney general of Massachusetts, then lived in Paris for two years (1956-1958). On his return to the United States he taught at Boston University's Institute of Law and Medicine, often taking his students to visit law courts and prisons.

Titicut Follies

Increasingly bored with the abstractions of the law, Wiseman bought the film rights to The Cool World...