Cameraperson

Great documentaries tend to have one or two magical moments in them where a decisive moment in reality is captured just right. This is pretty much a 90-minute collection of such moments from one person's perspective shot all over the world. It's an incredible watch.

In making this film, Johnson has created a very personal and compelling audio-visual tapestry that not only captures what one imagines to be the essence of doing cinematography, but which also acts as a powerful historical record of the way in which some things change (for good or bad) and other things stay the same (for good or bad). This applies as much to the personal as to the public.

Riveting, quietly profound documentary assembles 25 years worth of off-cuts from Johnson's archives - the pieces and moments initially don't seem to fit together, but gradually a thoughtful, extraordinarily moving narrative emerges -- in revealing these snatches of seemingly unimportant scenes, Johnson crafts an empathetic view of lives being lived, both on-screen and behind the camera, leading to a devastating sequence involving Johnson's own mother. A unique and unforgettable experience.

its conflicted ontology is cinema's, right there in the title, and johnson's awareness of such is demonstrated by her chosen derrida quote, said offhand as they cross the road together: "she sees everything and she's totally blind, like the philosopher who falls in the well while looking at the stars". i love that the defining piece on this was penned by michael almereyda, who places it in the lineage of marker and vertov.

Portrait of the Artist as a Technician. More fruitfully, Cameraperson is a film that sort of unlocks the black box of the documentary form, to reveal the moments of serendipity and filmmaking choices that inform these films' construction -- and of the moments and choices that don't, because they're perhaps too "authentic," because they subvert the illusion of narrative cohesion and disembodied objectivity.

The moving image as memoir. Our investment in Johnson and the people and places she chooses to capture is inseparable from her decision to share them with us; by seeing through her eyes, we're forced to consider what an endless ocean of feelings and memories another person is. These images will have to suffice instead.

Filled with sharp, beautiful images of landscapes but especially people from around the world, the film on its surface looks like little more than a pastiche of edited together footage. But its overall impact is something much greater, pointing us toward empathy and understanding of the other, even as it remains a deeply personal record of Johnson's work over the years.

The challenge, then, is not only in the pacing and editing but also in selecting compelling footage. On this first point, Cameraperson largely succeeds. What hobbles Cameraperson is that most of the footage, both in isolation and in context, isn't very compelling.

Mesmerizing and somehow both sprawling & intimate.

johnson is just an incredible observer. I can imagine myself tuning out probably 10 minutes into in any other documentary of this type but every footage manages to create some sense of curiosity throughout cameraperson. it manages to be very personal yet very accessible as johnson is so expressive without uttering a single word. immensely evocative.

Viewed December 19, 2016.

Staggering. On a basic level, all the leftover footage it already make for compelling mini-narratives on their own (esp. the breech birth sequence), but then you see how all these chunks of narrative have been edited together and how it represents the documentarian & their relationship to their subject, their influences (one sequence functions as a mini-Night & Fog), modern geopolitics, what's filmed & what is allowed to be filmed, etc. A heady documentary that needs to be picked at.

An interesting collection of unique experiences but not necessarily one with a broader message or theme, much like life itself.

Not my cup of tea. I can see why a person would put random B-roll footage together to justify its existence and document their career in some way, but I can't see any meaning in combining this footage or in releasing it to the world. Some of the scenes give us an insight into who's behind the camera, in a way that is absent in traditional features and documentaries, which is mildly interesting but hardly intimate. I'd know more about camera operating if I went out with my own for an hour or two.

Johnson does a wonderful job of establishing herself/her camera as the protagonist of this film although we never see them. It's a masterclass in documentary film making and reminding the presence of the camera in every footage. It also turns into an essay about looking, remembrance, life, death, and love; although that feeling is fleeting and is not as present in every moment of the film.

Intensely personal, oft times uncomfortably so. Documentary as much as it is essayist, Johnson deftly interrogates human connection, voyeurism, the cinematic apparatus, reality, and narrative with a tremendously humanist eye for the world. Much of fascination and emotion can be found in the "banal" of the world, indeed.

This wasn't anything more than a few nice shots and capturing human suffering, but I found almost nothing captivating. It is a good concept but very very poor execution(feels quite pretentious too) and cannot really go beyond "a bunch of deleted scenes". I'm generally not a big fan of "compilation" style documentaries anyway but things like Baraka, Samsara can be quite fascinating. This wasn't.

It made me wonder, it made me cry, made me realise that there is so much more to this life. Unveiled, raw, a 10/10.

Organic patterns and trends emerge from otherwise unrelated footage being collaged together and grown with the passage of time. Capturing the uncapturable.

It is what it claims to be a collection of moving, life affirming, sometimes terrifying moments caught on camera.

As Johnson shoots footage of her mother slipping away into dementia, and footage of her own children, the status of these clips as Johnson's memories start to become clearer. The fragmentary nature of the film mirrors the fragmentary nature of memory. A truly beautiful and profound film.

I'm sure there's a good film in here somewhere but it's not for me, it seems symptomatic of a style of documentary making that demands that you the viewer fill in the gaps - it's like jazz, you've got to listen to the notes not being played

That's some memories! The film takes some patience to behold, it works nicely as a ambiance piece for relaxing, and once in a while something special comes up, like the moments with her mother dealing with Alzheimers and that baby gasping for air. I'm not a major fan of these random montage pieces, but Kirsten Johnson's experiences as a camerawoman kept my attention.