CAMERAPERSON

What does it mean to film another person? How does it affect that person – and what does it do to the one who films? Kirsten Johnson is one of the most notable cinematographers working in documentary cinema today, having shot Citizenfour, Happy Valley, Fahrenheit 9/11, The Oath, The Invisible War, and dozens of other essential documentaries. With her visually radical memoir Cameraperson, Johnson presents an extraordinary and deeply poetic film of her own, drawing on the remarkable and varied footage that she has shot and reframing it in ways that illuminate moments and situations that have personally affected her. What emerges is an elegant meditation on the relationship between story-telling and the camera frame, as Johnson transforms scenes that have been presented in so many other directors' films as one reflection of truth into another kind of story – one about personal journey, craft, and direct human connection.

“In making Cameraperson, we decided to rely as much as possible on the evidence of my experience in the footage I shot in the moment. We know that this fragmentary portrait is incomplete and are interested in the way it points to how stories are constructed. Our hope is to convey the immediacy of finding oneself in new territory with a camera as well as giving the audience a sense of how the accumulation of joys and dilemmas a cameraperson must juggle builds over time. Like in the film, this is an invitation to you and an acknowledgement of how complex it is to film and be filmed.“

Kirsten Johnson