On Friday, in the comments to Rawlins Gilliand's Neimans recollections, Friend of Unfair Park Joseph B. wrote:
I recently read an article on famed documentarian Frederick Wiseman and discovered he filmed a 4 hour documentary on Neiman Narcus here in Dallas back in the early 80's. Anyone seen it? Several critics have called it (and Wiseman's looong career of equally long documentaries) a lost masterpiece.Well, Joseph B., you're in luck. On the back of the AFI Dallas International Film Festival schedule-insert that ran in The Dallas Morning News yesterday, there was this addendum: On March 30 at 4:15 p.m. at the AMC NorthPark, the festival is indeed screening 1983's The Store, about "everything from the selection, presentation, marketing, pricing, advertising and selling of vast array of consumer products to the day-to-day demands on the internal management of the company."
It's in advance of An Evening with Fred Wiseman
scheduled for April 14 at 6:30 p.m. at the Hughes Trigg Theater on the
SMU campus. Matter of fact, Wiseman -- who ranks with Robert Drew, Al
and David Maysles and D.A. Pennebaker as one of the men who defined the
modern-day doc -- will be at the university April 14 and 15 offering
master classes to Meadows students, while his docs are screening about
town March 17 through April 3. Here's the university's synopsis of the
Neimans doc:
The Store (1983), Wiseman's first color film, scrutinizes the world-famous Neiman-Marcus department store in Dallas. Its subject: the shallow lives of America's economic elite and those who service them. Conspicuous consumption is everywhere in evidence. The clienteletry on expensive gowns and furs in the store's dressing rooms. A compliant group of saleswomen are led in smile exercises as they prepare to meet their condescending customers. (118 min.)
