Cameraperson

Q&A filmmaker Kirsten Johnson with Joe Berlinger

2016. 102 m. Kirsten Johnson. Janus Films. US. Various with subtitles. Rated NR.

Series

Exposing her role behind the camera, cinematographer Kirsten Johnson reaches into the vast trove of footage she has shot over decades around the world. What emerges is a visually bold memoir and a revelatory interrogation of the power of the camera. Cameraperson is a tapestry of footage captured over Johnson’s twenty-five-year career. Through a series of episodic juxtapositions, Johnson explores the relationships between image makers and their subjects, the tension between the objectivity and intervention of the camera, and the complex interaction of unfiltered reality and crafted narrative. A work that combines documentary, autobiography, and ethical inquiry, Cameraperson is both a moving glimpse into one filmmaker’s personal journey and a thoughtful examination of what it means to train a camera on the world.

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Q&A filmmaker/cinematographer Kirsten Johnson with Joe Berlinger

Tuesday, Jan. 3 2017, 7:30

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Kirsten Johnson has worked as both documentary cinematographer and director committing herself to human rights issues and visual creativity. She is the principal cinematographer on over 40 feature-length documentaries and has been credited on countless others. She has a longstanding collaboration with Oscar-winning filmmaker Laura Poitras, credited as cinematographer for The Oath, Citizenfour, and the upcoming Asylum. Additionally, she shot footage that appeared in Poitras' visual exhibition on surveillance, which opened at the Whitney Museum in spring 2016.

Joe Berlinger is an Academy Award-nominated filmmaker. Berlinger’s films include the landmark documentaries Brother’s Keeper, Paradise Lost, and Metallica: Some Kind of Monster. Crude, about oil pollution in the Amazon Rainforest, won 22 human rights, environmental and film festival awards and recently triggered a high-profile First Amendment battle with oil-giant Chevron. His most recent film, Tony Robbins: I Am Not Your Guru premiered at SXSW 2016. Berlinger has received two Emmy and Peabody awards for his television work.