HIGH SCHOOL II U.S. Independents - Documentaries

One of America’s foremost documentarians, Frederick Wiseman ( Titicut Follies), continues his examination of American institutional life with High School II. Unrelated to his 1969 film High School, High Schoof’llfocuses on Central Park East Secondary School, a successful, public, alternative high school in New York’s Spanish Harlem. The film gives a fascinating glimpse into how an unconventional teaching style nurtures learning by encouraging students to critique complex issues requiring collaboration, personal responsibility, and a tolerance for uncertainty rather than adherence to rigid, linear logic. Using his patented no-interview, no-narration, cinema verite style, Wiseman shows us everything a visitor to the school would see without further elaboration. The result is a comprehensive document of cutting edge pedagogical methods that reveals the humanity of its participants with humor and vitality.