Cam­er­ap­er­son

One of the keys to unlock­ing Kirsten Johnson’s incom­pa­ra­ble new docu-mem­oir Cam­er­ap­er­son is to con­sid­er that beau­ti­ful­ly con­cise title. Cam­er­ap­er­son: two words that have been bound togeth­er to cre­ate a sin­gle and sin­gu­lar being. We sel­dom see John­son, a vet­er­an doc­u­men­tary cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er, through­out the dura­tion of the film, aside from the occa­sion­al­ly out­stretched arm or focus-adjust­ing hand. But to watch Cam­er­ap­er­son is to under­stand that the cam­era is by now an extra appendage for John­son, who culled togeth­er footage from the many doc­u­men­taries she has shot to craft a qui­et­ly com­mand­ing self-por­trait of a film­mak­er whose life and work have long been indistinguishable.

Johnson’s film is a glo­be­trot­ting and time-hop­ping jour­ney through a 25-year career that tak­en her from a heav­i­ly pro­tect­ed deten­tion site for Al-Qae­da pris­on­ers in San’a, Yemen, to an open divi­sion box­ing tour­na­ment in Brook­lyn, where one scrap­py com­peti­tor stoni­ly pre­pares for a fight then throws an unnerv­ing tem­per tantrum when he los­es, a spec­ta­cle that John­son cap­tures in all of its fiery and extend­ed petu­lan­cy. Between this, John­son zigza­gs from a hec­tic mater­ni­ty ward in Kano, Nige­ria, where a hero­ical­ly prag­mat­ic mid­wife des­per­ate­ly attempts to revive a new­born baby after a dif­fi­cult deliv­ery, to a dis­trict attorney’s office in Jasper, Texas, where some weary pros­e­cu­tors pre­pare their case against the infa­mous killers of James Byrd, Jr, to an out­door police post in Kab­ul, Afghanistan, where a grin­ning offi­cer leaves John­son his fresh­ly-cut water­mel­on before speed­ing away to an assignment.

Each des­ti­na­tion offers a cap­ti­vat­ing movie unto itself and we nev­er stay too long in any one place. At times, the whirl­wind speed with which Johnson’s remark­able edi­tor Nels Bangert­er trans­ports us from loca­tion to loca­tion can be pur­pose­ly dis­ori­ent­ing, even dizzy­ing­ly so. There’s also an unpol­ished raw­ness to Johnson’s shot com­po­si­tions that, com­bined with Bangerter’s ellip­ti­cal mon­tage, makes for an engag­ing scrap­book of frag­men­tary expe­ri­ences, but, quite pos­si­bly, lit­tle else.

We quick­ly learn, how­ev­er, that mere scrap­book­ing is the bare min­i­mum of Johnson’s objec­tive. Ear­ly on, she shows us a rav­ish­ing, sta­t­ic weath­er shot of an open blue-grey sky in in Nod­away Coun­ty, Mis­souri, lin­ger­ing on this nat­ur­al vista until it is sud­den­ly streaked with impos­ing thun­der. John­son lets out a sin­gle ​“whoa.” Then, out of nowhere, she sneezes – twice – as the cam­era wob­bles with each burst. It’s a dis­arm­ing moment of easy humour but it bespeaks a more intrigu­ing moti­va­tion dri­ving the film. In many of Cameraperson’s shots, Johnson’s cam­era bobs, shifts, and shakes. We fre­quent­ly catch her in the process­es of steady­ing, focus­ing, and repo­si­tion­ing. These moments might seem like a dis­trac­tion to some but their incor­po­ra­tion actu­al­ly pro­duces the much deep­er effect of demys­ti­fy­ing the doc­u­men­tary process, cap­tur­ing the mag­ic of shoot­ing while sly­ly acknowl­edg­ing the human being who has con­jured it.

John­son is far from a silent wit­ness to the scenes and speak­ers she is cap­tur­ing and one of the many virtues of her film is get­ting a first-hand view of both the care­ful assem­bly that fre­quent­ly goes into a shot and the inevitable spon­tane­ity that aris­es regard­less of intent or prepa­ra­tion. In one scene, shot in an abor­tion clin­ic dur­ing the mak­ing of Dawn Porter’s Trapped in Huntsville, Alaba­ma, Porter talks with a young sin­gle moth­er about to under­go the pro­ce­dure after her sec­ond unin­tend­ed preg­nan­cy. When the girl begins to cry, both Porter and John­son chime in with con­so­la­tion, reas­sur­ing her that she is doing the right thing. Johnson’s film­ing of this tes­ti­mo­ny lingers on the speaker’s lap and hands, hid­ing her face and pre­serv­ing her anonymi­ty while imply­ing a great deal through ges­ture and still­ness. Lat­er, this fram­ing will take on added poignan­cy as John­son shoots an inter­view with a late-age Bosn­ian rape sur­vivor in exact­ly the same fashion.

Cam­er­ap­er­son brims with the open, trust­ing, and coop­er­a­tive spir­it of a true com­mu­nal cre­ation, aid­ed not only by past col­lab­o­ra­tors like Porter, Michael Moore, and Lau­ra Poitras, whose includ­ed films John­son has giv­en a stur­dy look and feel, but by the myr­i­ad indi­vid­u­als who appear before Johnson’s search­ing cam­era. A deter­mined farmer in the midst of herd­ing his sheep is filmed with the same won­der as the French philoso­pher Jacques Der­ri­da as he walks the streets of Soho and the­o­ris­es with a group of col­leagues. John­son shoots two Dar­furi­an women as they chop down trees and ban­ter about being chased out of their homes by Arab forces with the same con­tem­pla­tive inter­est she shows a male cho­rus singing the Penn State col­lege anthem before the school’s first foot­ball game fol­low­ing the child sex abuse scan­dal that for­ev­er tar­nished its legacy.

We become just as attached to a Mus­lim fam­i­ly that has recent­ly returned to the wild­flower-cov­ered hills of their home in Foča, Bosnia after years of eth­nic cleans­ing as we do to Johnson’s own fam­i­ly, includ­ing her elder­ly moth­er, bat­tling Alzheimers at home in her Wyoming ranch but still lucid enough to imper­son­ate her daughter’s ear­ly facial expres­sions. It is a tes­ta­ment to Johnson’s trans­for­ma­tive film­mak­ing that both vis­its feel equal­ly auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal. From scene to scene, John­son cap­tures that rare but tran­scen­dent moment that tran­spires in the phys­i­cal space between film­mak­er and sub­ject when two lives briefly become one. Some­times, it’s the spaces them­selves that tell the sto­ry, as in a somber and gor­geous­ly-com­posed mid-film mon­tage that trans­ports us to var­i­ous sites of mas­sacre, from Hotel Africa to Tahrir Square to Wound­ed Knee.

Unlike any­thing else you are like­ly to see this year, Cam­er­ap­er­son is rad­i­cal­ly unlocked from tra­di­tion­al movie demands, devis­ing its own cin­e­mat­ic gram­mar to achieve an uncom­mon­ly elo­quent and extra­or­di­nar­i­ly soul­ful film­mak­ing doc­u­ment that ful­ly embeds us into Johnson’s gaze and rewards our own with each pass­ing scene. It encom­pass­es every imag­in­able slice of life, from heart­break to exu­ber­ance to sheer inex­plic­a­bil­i­ty. The film may begin as an unusu­al glimpse into a pro­lif­ic cinematographer’s utter­ly dis­tinc­tive way of life, but by its con­clu­sion, John­son has impart­ed some­thing far more elu­sive yet no less pro­found: a new and exhil­a­rat­ing way of see­ing the world.