Cameraperson

November 1, 2016 · The Pilot Light · 7:30 p.m.

A boxing match in Brooklyn; life in postwar Bosnia and Herzegovina; the daily routine of a Nigerian midwife; an intimate family moment at home: these scenes and others are woven into Cameraperson, a tapestry of footage captured over the twenty-five-year career of documentary cinematographer Kirsten Johnson.

Through a series of episodic juxtapositions, Johnson explores the relationships between image makers and their subjects, the tension between the objectivity and intervention of the camera, and the complex interaction of unfiltered reality and crafted narrative. A work that combines documentary, autobiography, and ethical inquiry, Cameraperson is both a moving glimpse into one filmmaker’s personal journey and a thoughtful examination of what it means to train a camera on the world.

“‘These are the images that have marked me and leave me wondering still.’ That’s how Kirsten Johnson prefaces Cameraperson… Leave me wondering still: Those words evoke a sense of mystery, of incompleteness, which is exactly the right frame of mind in which to watch Johnson’s own mesmerizing film.” — The Village Voice

“Johnson’s extraordinary and poetic film accomplishes for documentary cinematography what Christian Frei’s War Photographer (2001) did for photojournalism, illuminating the complex ethical, philosophical, and political stakes behind a craft that remains mostly concealed from the lay consumer of images.” — Los Angeles Review of Books

About the Filmmaker

Kirsten Johnson has worked as a documentary cinematographer and director, and has committed herself to recording human-rights issues and fostering visual creativity. She has been the principal cinematographer on more than forty feature-length documentaries, and she has been credited on numerous others.

After graduating from Brown University in 1987 with a degree in fine arts and literature, Johnson traveled to Senegal to study with acclaimed filmmakers Djibril Diop Mambéty and Ousmane Sembène. Johnson then served as camera person on a number of highly acclaimed and award-winning documentaries, including Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004), This Film Is Not Yet Rated (2006), Pray the Devil Back to Hell (2008), and The Invisible War (2012).Johnson has had a long-standing collaboration with Oscar-winning filmmaker Laura Poitras; she was the cinematographer on The Oath (2010) and Citizenfour (2014) and shot the upcoming film Risk.