SXSW Film Review: Cameraperson

At first, you wonder what Kirsten Johnson, a documentary cinematographer, is after in stringing together all these clips from the scores of films she’s shot over the years. Then somewhere along the way, without being prompted, you find the thread, you discover her reason, and also her rhyme.

From places around the world and the U.S., Johnson’s accumulated images can initially appear like a randomly presented curriculum vitae. Clips from international trouble spots like Yemen, Liberia, Kabul, and Jasper, Texas, are mixed with footage from a boxing gym in Queens, semiotician Jacques Derrida in Manhattan, a pregnant teen in Huntsville, Ala. And there’s the footage of her mother, nearly buckling in the wind while roaming familiar territory in an Alzheimer’s fugue.

Johnson’s voice can be occasionally heard either speaking with her director offscreen or letting loose an involuntary gasp; a couple of times she is glimpsed on camera. Yet largely free of interjections by the filmmaker, correspondences among the images emerge. Johnson is thinking about the responsibilities a documentarian has to her subject. While hearing testimonies from a genocide’s survivors or watching a little Bosnian toddler lurch perilously for an axe, what duties does an observer have? Johnson doesn’t purport to have the answers, but instead shows us that probing the questions and the morality is an integral part of the job.

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Cameraperson

Festival Favorites
Tuesday, March 15, 10:30am, Alamo Ritz
Wednesday, March 16, 11:45am, Marchesa