Essential Cinema: Frederick Wiseman: Eight Systems

MISSILE

Directed by Frederick Wiseman

USA, 1988, 2h 0min, DCP

Essential Cinema  Frederick Wiseman: Eight Systems

There are no current or future screenings planned for this film.

“One comes away with the frightening feeling that dealing with devastation is considered a prosaic business.”
—The Chicago Tribune

“[Wiseman] has given a fair and hard look into the 20th century’s most horrifying institution, one that should occasion serious reflection by hawks and doves alike.”
—The Hollywood Reporter

Documentary legend Frederick Wiseman tackles nuclear proliferation in a sidelong yet deeply powerful way in this chronicle of the 4315th Training Squadron of the Strategic Air Command who train the personnel that staff America’s missile launching sites. While the abstract horror of nuclear war is studiously avoided, the workmanlike pragmatism of the mundane instruction is imbued with its own kind of dread. Newly restored.

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