Who is the greatest American filmmaker of the last 30 years? Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, Stanley Kubrick, John Cassavetes, Woody Allen, Robert Altman all have their partisans. But if the criteria includes the most masterpieces, or the highest sustained level of accomplishment, maybe we should be talking about Frederick Wiseman.

Since 1967, when TITICUT FOLLIES, his portrait of a state prison for the criminally insane, made its debut, he has directed a total of [32] complex, disturbing, illuminating documentaries, on the average of one a year…

If Walt Whitman’s grandiosely democratic aim was to capture ‘the poem of these United States,’ then Frederick Wiseman, in a more diffident vein, is his one true grandson.

–Phillip Lopate, New York Times