At Berkeley

Frederick Wiseman’s film AT BERKELEY is a documentary film about the University of California at Berkeley, the oldest and most prestigious member of a ten campus public education system and one of the finest research and teaching facilities in the world. The film shows the major aspects of university life with particular emphasis on the administrative efforts to maintain the academic excellence, public role, and the economic, racial and social diversity of the student body of America’s premiere public university in the face of drastic budgetary cuts imposed by the State of California. The goal of the film is to show how a major American university is administered and to suggest the complex relationship among its various constituencies – students, faculty, administrators, alumni, the City of Berkeley, the State of California and the federal government. In a more abstract way, the film will look closely at Berkeley’s intellectual and social mission, its obligation to the state and to larger ideas of higher education as well as illustrate how decisions are made and implemented by the administration in collaboration with its various constituencies.