Cameraperson

Cameraperson (2016) is a documentary, directed by Kirsten Johnson, about her own career. Johnson has directed--or done the cinematography--for many documentaries that certainly appear to be extremely interesting. Unfortunately, I haven't seen any of them, so I can't comment directly about her work. She calls Cameraperson an autobiography, but I don't think that's really accurate. We do learn a bit about Johnson and her family in the movie, but mostly we see a patchwork quilt of her work. (I say patchwork quilt because Johnson has presented short segments of her films in seemingly random order.)

Michael Moore--who appears in one of the segments--is a documentary film director who is always in the center of his movies. However, Johnson doesn't seem to appear much in her own films. (One exception is a movie she filmed in Bosnia. She returned five years later to interview the same people, and they treated her like an old friend.)

Johnson is talented, so a short segment of each film whets your appetite. However, each segment is too short to be satisfying. Also, it's hard to learn why she makes documentaries. Is it just what she does, or does she have a political or social agenda? Johnson doesn't tell us, so we have to speculate.

We saw this film at the excellent Little Theatre in Rochester, NY. It will work almost as well on the small screen.

I was lucky enough to watch this on the big screen which may have given me a bias to my sheer adoration for this film.

I was moved. I feel this captured the sheer power of cinema to give insight into ways of life we have never seen or experienced. The wonderful eye of Kirsten Johnson guides us through her experiences. Her empathy bleeds through the screen and give you a truly breathtaking documentary.

It gives you a moment to detach yourself from the world. And look at it through someone else's eye.

A documentary that isnt worried about teaching you explicit facts, but more letting you empathise and wonder about this world and all of us who reside here.

I captivated from the very first shot to the end of the credits. I will watch this again.

Kirsten Johnson's CAMERAPERSON is a documentary collage lovingly pieced together from outtakes of the many documentaries she's worked on in her long career as, well, a cameraperson. Intermingled with these outtakes are snippets from Johnson's personal life: playing with her twin toddlers, poignant flashes of her mother succumbing to Alzheimer's, sweet moments with her father & the twins at her parents' home in Beaux Arts, WA. In the vein of Koyaanisqatsi or Fast, Cheap & Out of Control, the seemingly unrelated clips are woven together until patterns begin to emerge. In the Q&A afterward, Ms. Johnson said that in most every Q&A an audience member discovers a new pattern or theme--pointing to an editing process that is both intentional & subconscious. The pacing & structure of the movie invokes the essence of fleeting memories. As an audience, we are given a behind the scenes look at what it takes to make documentaries. In a clip that illustrates the difficult balance between objective observer & compassionate storyteller, we watch a Bosnian toddler attempting to play with an axe. As his tiny fingers come perilously close to the blade, the audience cringes & we hear an off-camera exclamation of "Oh, Jesus!" from Johnson. An intimate portrait of a cameraperson, illustrating the delicate balance between the personal & the professional.

Kirsten Johnson has been working in the camera department and as cinematographer, producer and director for decades; her first credit, according to the Internet Movie Database, was in 1996. This movie is a series of excerpts from the movies she has handled the camera on, all over the world, from Afghanistan to Serbia, to Brooklyn, to her family. She calls the results onscreen an album, and a betrayal: that you may have someone's permission when filming, but later.... in some ways it is a betrayal: particularly when she films her mother in the grip of Alzheimer's.

But even an album requires organizing. Even if you include everything, the order of each sequence's inclusion affects its meaning; that's the point of the Kuleshov Effect. So what does this movie add up to, what does it say, what does it mean?

That is a question that can only be answered by the audience, the often unremarked component of cinema. A good film maker, a good editor, can often estimate what that result is, but only the audience can say what it is. Theory and practice: try it out and see what the result is. It's experimental cinema. The creator may have an opinion, but, well, at that point, it's no longer Miss Johnson's movie.

I had such high hopes for this to work. The very title makes a huge promise, and it partly fulfills it, however You might find the Person not as charming as She thinks She is.

There's a dissonance between first two sequences of the film and the whole rest. Whatch these two. These are amazing - there the Camera really is the Person. The whole rest is pedestrian, with too much 'in your face' ideology and self indulgence.