Welcome back to Camera Obscura, Curbed's series of photo essays by Nathan Kensinger. This week, examining a new film about Jackson Heights.
Jackson Heights, Queens, is one of the most diverse communities in the world, with 167 languages spoken and immigrants from nearly every Asian and American nation. Frederick Wiseman, at 85 years old, is one of the most accomplished filmmakers alive, with 40 masterful documentaries created over the past 50 years. In Jackson Heights, which opens this week at the Film Forum, is the result of these two unique forces meeting, and is an exhilarating portrait of the future of America, created by an artist at the peak of his talents. "I was interested in doing a movie about the new immigrants to America, and Jackson Heights is an intense example of that kind of community," said Wiseman, during a recent conversation at the Film Forum. "What's going on in Jackson Heights is going on, in some form or another, in all the major American cities. And it's going on in all the cities in the West."