Cameraperson

Cinematographer Kirsten Johnson's m.o. for her 2016 documentary CAMERAPERSON is evident fairly early.   This assemblage of footage from several of the documentaries she shot over several years is edited to triumph the resilience of women.  We hear the desperation of a young mother in Alabama who isn't sure she can afford to support a second child.  A mother in Brooklyn her comforts her highly upset son after he loses a boxing match.  An elderly grandmother from Rwanda who is in denial of the tumult that has upended her life.  Women in Bosnia and Afghanistan who were raped.   Another documentary filmmaker in Long Island who is at her wits' end, sorting through rooms of possessions left by her deceased mother.  The matter of fact woman delivering babies in Nigeria, one of whom lacks oxygen and there's none available.

But each viewer will take away something different.  That is why I feel this film will never become dated or passe, a relic of its time.  Johnson's collage seems dense enough to become something new with each revisit.  At the time of this writing, I've had one viewing.  It was the day before, and its images are re-emerging vividly.  Any great film will do that.  The disparate locations and camera subjects share much.  What that is is up to you.  They are all human, perhaps all victims of something.  Genocide, ethnic cleansing.  There are male victims, too.  Johnson's mother is shown wandering her home in Wyoming, all but lost in the fog of Alzheimer.  One vivid sequence shows her becoming overwhelmed by an oncoming wind storm.  Hard to mistake what is being said here.

The film takes a decidedly melancholy approach, with a dash of quiet humor here and there.  This may owe to the original films themselves.  What we see in CAMERPERSON are alternate takes and unused footage from her filmography.  Many viewers will only be familiar with FARENHEIT 9/11, maybe CITIZENFOUR.  It may well make you curious to seek them out, but the director is not merely presenting her portfolio.  It's obvious that Johnson is making the case that souls in Bosnia experience some of the same strong emotions as lawyers in Texas.  As the film jumps around the world and through differing epochs,  it never feels like some awkward juxtaposition.

Just about every viewer will find something to relate to.  I was hit by scenes of Kirsten's mother, brushing her daughter's hair.  The aforementioned doc filmmaker flinging her mother's old files across a room in frustration.  The recountings of unspeakable horrors at the hands of soldiers and bandits in countries I'll never visit.  Still shots of tranquil locations, once sites of atrocities, identified by onscreen titles.   The unexplainable emptiness felt when a soldier leaves his watermelon behind as duty calls.  CAMERPERSON became my movie fairly quickly.  Maybe my take aways were some of what Johnson intended.  But more than most films I've seen, this is for the viewer to embrace and own.