I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: Be he moth or be he not

Join us every week for a trip into the weird and wonderful world of trailers. Whether it’s the first teaser for the latest instalment in your favourite franchise, an obscure preview for a strange indie darling, whether it’s good, bad, ugly or just plain weird – your favourite pop culture baristas are there to tell you what they think.

What better way to spend a hot summer Sunday than sitting in a cool cinema and watching a 4 1/2 hour documentary about the Boston municipal government? Or a similarly long film about the inner workings of the National Gallery? Or, indeed, an angry and unexpectedly lyrical look at the US welfare system in the mid-’70s? Frederick Wiseman has it all for you, and much more beyond, as Matt found out in June when his favourite cinema did a Wiseman programme in honour of the late documentarian.

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Wiseman’s world

If you had told me earlier in the year that one of my favourite cinema experiences this year would be a set of long-form documentaries about subjects ranging from political institutions through bureaucracies to libraries, galleries and fine dining, and that I’d not only go and see several such documentaries three or four hours (and sometimes more) in length, after finishing one I’d want to see the next one pretty much right after? I would have laughed in disbelief.

Well, call me a convert: a one-month curated programme of documentaries by Frederick Wiseman, who died last February, turned me from someone who had heard of Wiseman into a card-carrying believer.

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