Primate

Frederick Wiseman turns his camera on the Yerkes Primate Research Center in Atlanta. Chimpanzees, gorillas and monkeys are put through intelligence tests, gravity experiments, muscle stimulation and studies of sexual function, while scientists explain the aims and the results of the work. The method is the one Wiseman always uses, no narration and no commentary, but the cutting says something all the same. The film opens on photographs of the scientists and then goes to the animals in captivity, so that the people in ties, holding clipboards and talking into tape recorders, become the ones being watched. What Wiseman wants from a viewer is to ask, unprompted, whether experimenting on primates can be justified.