"Cameraperson" is recent film by veteran documentary cinematographer Kirsten Johnson. It is composed of several different scenes that were filmed by Johnson over her career for various other documentaries all over the world. The images in this film may be familiar to some members of the audience because they were originally filmed for other documentaries. They aren't all final cuts though; many of them are clips of trying to set up the camera or getting the right angle or frame along with clips from the family life of Kirsten Johnson. The first thing that struck me about this film was how captivating it is from the first frame to the last; I could not look away from the screen no matter how opaque the shot might seem at the moment. The first twenty to thirty minutes or so will have most members of the audience, including myself, confused as to what exactly the point of the images we are seeing is. Patience is required in the viewing of this film. Once it clicks, and you'll know when it does, it becomes all the more engaging. This film tells many stories, not chronologically, but nonetheless effectively and perhaps all the more moving. At its core, "Cameraperson" is an autobiography of Kirsten Johnson. But it is also a meditation on human suffering, the wonder of the world around us, the ethics of nonfiction film, the sadly ironic contrast between the beauty of nature and the extent to which it can be defiled by evil, and an examination of the filmmakers own family. We see her in scenes taking place at her New York apartment, home in Colorado Springs, and far away ranch as she interacts with her mother, a victim of Alzheimer's disease, her father and her twin boys. These scenes are surrounded by scenes of shepherds in the Bosnian Mountains, desert plains, city streets, and government black sites. The ethics of documentary filmmaking, as I mentioned earlier, are also examined. Is it more moving to see images of a body that has been torn to shreds after being dragged by a truck, or to see the chain that dragged him being held by the prosecutor as he speaks about the atrocity? This question is answered in one scene, split in to two parts and book-ending several other scenes. In the first scene, we see the lawyer talking about the book of images that they distributed to the jurors to prevent causing further pain by having to show them in trial. The second comes directly after a conversation had with a film professor as he talks about the depiction of violence in nonfiction film and how it ultimately ends up being disrespectful, becoming entertainment. We then jump to a cut of the cover of the book of photos; we no longer want to see what's inside as we did before. Bringing attention to the art of filmmaking is also a theme in the film, particularly in recognizing the technical aspects of filmmaking. Most people don't think much about the cinematographer when they think about a great film. Shots are attributed to the director, but this film brings a special attention to the person behind the camera making all the shots work, and staring directly through the lens of the camera into the eyes of human beings. In film, especially nonfiction film, the cinematographer is responsible for establishing the human connection between the audience and the subject. "Cameraperson" does this especially beautifully because at the end of the film, we are able to see how the experiences and people Johnson has filmed connect her to them, us to them and her to us. This is an autobiography not merely because it is a compilation of the footage that has touched her throughout her extensive career, although it is that, but because she has her own story that is also full of pain, loss, love and life just like those she connects with as a Cameraperson.

"Cameraperson" is directed and photographed by Kirsten Johnson, distributed by Janus Films and released by Criterion. It had its premiere on January 26th at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival. It is not rated. I gave it four out of four stars.

The remarkable thing about Cameraperson, which I admired and felt connected to more and more as it went along, is that it is deceptive in a good way; at first things seem to not have much structure (except that, at least for the first half hour, Johnson is cutting generally from scenes she's shot in the United States to scenes that she captured in places like the Middle East or in Africa). But then in the second half of the film, things pay off that one didn't really expect to. Take the story of the nurse (or is she a doctor, she doesn't have a title exactly, perhaps simply midwife) in the hospital in Nigeria who helps deliver a beautiful baby (the beauty part isn't necessarily emphasized, it's simply there in Johnson's purely humanistic lens), and mentions that she's going to help deliver the twin that is still inside the mother.

Then Johnson cuts away and I thought that would be it, but instead she comes back to it about an hour into the documentary, where now the baby has been born but it's in danger of possibly dying - the nurse/midwife is able to keep the child at least breathing and awake, but they don't have oxygen at the hospital. Another case in point is a boxing match, where it seems early on to be footage of a middle-weight getting ready for a fight, and it cuts away and that's that. Again, an hour later, this pays off and we see that this fighter lost and leaves in a major huff (Johnson, breathlessly, moves so that she can get the shot in the hallway of him coming down), and he has a meltdown in the locker room, though a believable one, and in its approach its much rawer than anything that could be seen in a boxing movie in a thousand years.

What makes this special is that Johnson gets to fully embrace this unique "memoir" approach and is able to give us little moments that are little snapshots - think if it's like going through a scrapbook where you may only have one or two shots of Derrida or some sheep being flocked to and fro, but then a whole lot of pages of photos to the Bosnians, who make up probably the most of the run-time if I had to gauge a percentage - but there's storytelling woven in in that plant-pay-off sense. And the one constant that connects everything together is simple but a wonder to behold: Johnson is curious about people (or at least she is always there for her directors if she's not directly involved, which she usually is in some collaborative form), and we see their joys and pains and how much so many of these people have LIVED in these lifetimes where we take for granted what goes on.

Sure, one might want to criticize there are perhaps too many scenes of women crying or becoming upset - that is another constant, even including an outtake from a scene in Fahrenheit 9/11 with the soldier who feels not fully one way about not going back to war - yet that's what I liked about it, since it's not simply that. She doesn't suddenly cut in to someone crying or having a fit, there is build up and pay-off to these moments that she's captured so that, and I'm not the only one to point this out, it's also like each scrapbook page has a short story that tells gives us enough of a window so that we can feel more curious about their lives, which sometimes a documentary that's consumed in a narrative can't always do. And the juxtapositions are absorbing as well; she'll go from, say, showing a woman who has seen some horrors of rape and murder in a third world setting, to a... woman who has had it with her memories and throws all of her possessions across a room (this is one of the more memorable bits to me, especially at the end when they all break into laughter at the insanity they've just been a part of).

It goes without saying that this is all personal for her, and it can't not be that. Why, one might ask, does she include footage of her children and her father, for example, though with all the rest of this footage from these numerous documentaries she's photographed? Well, for starters, because she *can*, it's her movie, it's her memoir, but I think it also ties in with the rest of the film because she's lived as much genuinely and passionately with her kids going to pick up a dead bird in the backyard as she's had in that African hospital or in Darfur or anywhere else. And the title carries emphasis as well; we never really say 'Camera-Woman', and yet 'Camera Person' sounds like something we usually wouldn't say or categorize. But maybe it's two different words, not necessarily about herself: she is the camera, and everyone else is the person, vulnerable and alive and in the moment, whether it's the kid with the bad eye who witnessed his brother being tortured/abused, or Jacques Derrida crossing a Manhattan street.

Kirsten Johnson has been working in the camera department and as cinematographer, producer and director for decades; her first credit, according to the Internet Movie Database, was in 1996. This movie is a series of excerpts from the movies she has handled the camera on, all over the world, from Afghanistan to Serbia, to Brooklyn, to her family. She calls the results onscreen an album, and a betrayal: that you may have someone's permission when filming, but later.... in some ways it is a betrayal: particularly when she films her mother in the grip of Alzheimer's.

But even an album requires organizing. Even if you include everything, the order of each sequence's inclusion affects its meaning; that's the point of the Kuleshov Effect. So what does this movie add up to, what does it say, what does it mean?

That is a question that can only be answered by the audience, the often unremarked component of cinema. A good film maker, a good editor, can often estimate what that result is, but only the audience can say what it is. Theory and practice: try it out and see what the result is. It's experimental cinema. The creator may have an opinion, but, well, at that point, it's no longer Miss Johnson's movie.