Dick Johnson is Dead
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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 -
Sundance 2020 Dispatch 9: Dick Johnson is Dead, Tesla
I don’t have anything like Six Takeaways From This Year’s Sundance to structure my final dispatch: The most I can offer is my general peer group’s consensus that the fiction side was relatively quiet while nonfiction work was stronger and more attention-getting, including the four-film launch of Concordia Studio. They arrived with, among others, my personal best-of-fest Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets and Time, and ended their first Sundance with the (reported) $12 million sale of verité doc Boys State to Apple and A24. Also high on the nonfiction priorities list, via Netflix, was Kirsten Johnson’s Dick Johnson is Dead, which premiered with the director […]
by Vadim Rizov on Feb 4, 2020 -
“When I Was a Kid, I Thought That Being a Psychiatrist Meant Getting to Sit in the Most Comfortable Chair in the World”: Kirsten Johnson | Dick Johnson is Dead
Whether capturing or creating a world, the objects onscreen tell as much of a story as the people within it. Whether sourced or accidental, insert shot or background detail, what prop or piece of set decoration do you find particularly integral to your film? What story does it tell? Charles and Ray Eames apparently wanted their Eames Lounge Chair and Ottoman to have the “warm receptive look of a well-used first baseman’s mitt.” When I was a child, I simply knew their chair as “Dad’s chair.” He had one of them at his psychiatry office and one at home. Buying […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 25, 2020
