Titicut Follies
Nov 11 - Nov 13, 2016
(Frederick Wiseman, US, 1967, 35mm, 84 min)
35mm print!
Titicut Follies is a stark and graphic portrayal of the conditions that existed at the State Prison for the Criminally Insane at Bridgewater, Massachusetts. The film won critical acclaim after its 1967 premiere at the New York Film Festival, but was then censored for 24 years after state officials objected to the startling depiction of guards and inmates.
“Titicut Follies is a documentary film that tells you more than you could possibly want to know...about life behind the walls of one of those institutions where we file and forget the criminal insane... A society’s treatment of the least of its citizens...is perhaps the best measure of its civilization. The repulsive reality revealed in Titicut Follies forces us to contemplate our capacity for callousness.” – Richard Schickel, Life