City Hall, a documentary about the Boston government by Frederick Wiseman, premieres on PBS Dec. 22. “City government touches almost every aspect of our lives,” said PBS, adding that the film “illustrates the variety of ways the Boston city administration can enter into civil discourse with its citizens. We see Mayor [Martin] Walsh and his administration address policy priorities such as racial justice, affordable housing, climate action and homelessness.”
Residing in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Wiseman’s documentaries include In Jackson Heights, Boxing Gym and Domestic Violence. City Hall is his 45th film.
The New York Times Magazine said the film “offers what amounts to, by the standards of a Wiseman film, a fairly conspicuous rebuke of the past four years of White House iniquity, simply by presenting municipal employees at every level of a local government — switchboard operators, sanitation workers, building inspectors, parking-ticket adjudicators, an eviction-prevention task force, a justice of the peace — fulfilling their duties with modesty, a baseline of professionalism and no obvious grift.”
