Domestic Violence

Crucial viewing from renowned documentary filmmaker Frederick Wiseman. This gripping, three-hour-plus profile of a Florida domestic abuse shelter opens like a particularly lurid episode of Cops. Tampa police are called out to three different domestic abuse situations: A petty argument between spouses that's about to get out of hand; a mother who's afraid of her disturbed 13-year-old son; and an elderly woman whose husband has left her covered in blood from the three-inch gash on her face. Wiseman then cuts to The Spring, Florida's largest domestic abuse center, where he and his cameras spent two months chronicling this particular social services system and how...