Cameraperson
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“We Think the Audience is Smarter Than Us”: Kirsten Johnson On Making Another Personal and Original Film With “Dick Johnson is Dead”
There are few directorial debuts as sui generis as Kirsten Johnson’s Cameraperson. A kind of experimental documentary, its premise was simple: it collected unused fragments from her long and storied career as a cinematographer, mostly for non-fiction works, among them Citizen Four, Fahrenheit 9/11, The Oath, and more. There was no story, there was no clear mission statement or theme, and the viewer was left to intuit meaning between the fragments arranged seemingly at random. And it was a success, quickly ushered into the Criterion Collection and taking her from a name among non-fiction auteurs to a name auteur herself. […]
by Matt Prigge on Sep 24, 2020 -
“If You Really Want To Make Something You Get Creative”: Experimental Documentarians Talk About Thinking Outside The Box At IFP Week 2019
Documentaries don’t have to play by the rules of fiction films. Take a non-fiction hit like Won’t You Be My Neighbor?: It doesn’t merely tell a linear story so much as jump around subjects, with Fred Rogers’ life as a basic foundation. (Compare/contrast with the forthcoming Tom Hanks-starrer A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, which zeroes in on one slice of his career.) But some documentaries go way out there. The IFP 2019 panel “Out of Bounds” rounded up four creatives — two filmmakers, one editor, and a producer tasked with helping people like them find funding and distribution — […]
by Matt Prigge on Sep 20, 2019 -
Cameraperson and O.J.: Made in America Top the 2017 Cinema Eye Honors
The Cinema Eye Honors, which has been celebrating exceptional documentary filmmaking since 2007, wrapped its first decade tonight with its annual awards ceremony, hosted by documentary director Steve James, at the Museum of the Moving Image. Kirsten Johnson’s memoiristic meditation on documentary image-making, Cameraperson was the big winner, taking home three awards, including Outstanding Achievement in Nonfiction Filmmaking, Outstanding Achievement in Editing and Outstanding Achievement in Cinematography, while Ezra Edelman’s sprawling O.J.: Made in America won two: Outstanding Achievement in Directing and Outstanding Achievement in Production. Other winners included Laura Ricciardi and Moira Demos’s Netflix series Making a Murderer (Outstanding […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jan 11, 2017 -
2016 Camden International Film Festival and Points North Winners Announced
Camden International Film Festival (CIFF) has announced the winners of the 2016 Festival, which ran from September 15-18 in Camden, Rockport and Rockland, Maine. For the second year, Conservation Media Group partnered with the Points North Institute to select projects from filmmakers and organizations alike that use video to create measurable action in ocean conservation or sustainable energy. 2016 CMG Action Grant finalists included: Alex Finn’s Whale Heritage Sites, Jeff Talbot’s Protect the Great Bear Sea, and Doug Woodring’s Global Alert – Floating Trash. This year’s $10,000 CMG Action Grant cash prize was awarded to Whale Heritage Sites. The 2016 class of […]
by Paula Bernstein on Sep 23, 2016 -
The Six Fonts of Cameraperson
Much has already been written about the piercing human insight of Kirsten Johnson’s Cameraperson. Working with material originally shot for a dozen other films, Johnson refashions the offcuts of her two-decade career as a documentary cinematographer into a patchwork memoir — one that reveals just as much about the woman behind the camera as the individuals who pass fleetingly before its lens. The effect is emotionally exhilarating, but the approach is unabashedly formal — and less has been written about the ways in which Johnson fractionates her footage in order to create a film of clear divisions and implicit rules. […]
by Charlie Lyne on Sep 20, 2016 -
Trailer Watch: Kirsten Johnson’s Personal Cameraperson
Cameraperson, Kirsten Johnson’s acclaimed personal documentary, has enjoyed a full festival run since its premiere earlier this year at the Sundance Film Festival. The film incorporates Johnson’s cinematography over the past 25 years, including her work on award-winning films such as Fahrenheit 9/11, The Invisible War, and Citizenfour. Now, in advance of its release from Janus Films next month, Cameraperson gets a trailer (above).
by Paula Bernstein on Aug 23, 2016 -
Locking Gaze: Kirsten Johnson on the Images of Her Thrilling Documentary, Cameraperson
Both memoir and essay film, Kirsten Johnson’s Cameraperson is an astonishing work of cinematic analysis and alchemy. Comprised of material shot by Johnson for 24 different documentaries over a span of 25 years, it’s a movie made up of fragments, globetrotting scenes that tumble one after the other, announced by title cards listing the location and year of the footage but not the director. Included, too, in the footage is personal material, some for film projects of Johnson’s that have yet to be realized and some home movies shot of her mother in the months before she died of Alzheimer’s. […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jul 25, 2016 -
What a Documentary DP Does: Kirsten Johnson on Cameraperson
Documentary DP Kirsten Johnson is probably best known for her work with Laura Poitras (The Oath, Citizenfour), but she’s been shooting for years. Out of her experience comes Cameraperson, an essay film assembled from mostly unused footage shot for many projects. Each segment is labeled by place rather than the project it came from. In eschewing voiceover, the chain of argumentation can be a little heavy-handed for my taste — i.e., cutting from someone talking about death to someone giving birth in a hospital — but the overall effect is constantly surprising and stimulating. The film begins by reminding us that even the […]
by Vadim Rizov on Jan 26, 2016
