NEW YORK, NY.- Following critical acclaim during its world premiere at Directors’ Fortnight at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival, Zipporah Films has announced that Frederick Wiseman’s National Gallery opened theatrically in the U.S.

Frederick Wiseman’s National Gallery takes the audience behind the scenes of a London institution, on a journey to the heart of a museum inhabited by masterpieces of Western art from the Middle Ages to the 19th Century. National Gallery is the portrait of a place, its way of working and relations with the world, its staff and public, and its paintings. In a perpetual and dizzying game of mirrors, film watches painting watches film.

Wiseman had this to say about his latest project: “I am trying to show as many different aspects of contemporary life as I can and organize them into a dramatic narrative structure. I first thought of making a film about a museum 30 years ago but other subjects intervened. I chose the National Gallery because it has one of the greatest collections of paintings from the 13th to the end of the 19th Century. Filming at the National Gallery was an opportunity to photograph some of the greatest paintings in the history of Western Art and to show the efforts involved in their restoration, preservation and presentation to the public and scholars of art.”

Over the last five years, Wiseman has continued his successful run with four other notable documentaries – La Danse, Boxing Gym, Crazy Horse, At Berkeley – and National Gallery is his 39th feature documentary overall since his first film, Titicut Follies, in 1967. Recently, Wiseman was honored with a Career Achievement Award from the Los Angeles Film Critics Association at the 38th Annual awards ceremony, which marked the first time a documentary filmmaker received this honor from the esteemed film critics group.

Zipporah Films, Inc. is the distributor of Wiseman’s films. For over forty years, he has created an exceptional body of work consisting of thirty nine full length documentaries devoted primarily to exploring contemporary life as it is expressed in institutions common to all societies (schools, hospitals, the military, police, prisons, courts, public housing, theater, ballet, and many other topics). Critic Phillip Lopate has called Frederick Wiseman “the greatest American filmmaker of the last 30 years.”

National Gallery was directed by Frederick Wiseman, with Wiseman also handling the editing and sound duties on the film. John Davey was in charge of photography. Sound Mix was Emmanuel Croset. Color Grading was Gilles Granier. The film was produced by Gallery Films LLC and Idéale Audience with the participation of CANAL +, Planete +, Le Fresnoy, PBS, and with the support of the Centre National de la Cinématographie, LEF Moving Image Fund, the Independent Television Service (ITVS), the Pershing Square Foundation, and Utah Film Center. A Zipporah Films Release.