Directed by Kirsten Johnson • 2016 • United States
A boxing match in Brooklyn; life in postwar Bosnia and Herzegovina; the daily routine of a Nigerian midwife; an intimate family moment at home with the director: Kirsten Johnson weaves these scenes and others into her film CAMERAPERSON, a tapestry of footage captured over her twenty-five-year career as a documentary cinematographer. 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 with crafted narrative. A work that combines documentary, autobiography, and ethical inquiry, CAMERAPERSON is a moving glimpse into one filmmaker’s personal journey and a thoughtful examination of what it means to train a camera on the world.
Up Next in Maysles Documentary Center
-
Shakedown
Directed by Leilah Weinraub • 2018 • United States
Charting the eight-year run of Shakedown, a peripatetic black lesbian strip club in Los Angeles, director Leilah Weinraub attempts “to portray the before and after of a utopic moment.” Weinraub presents a world unto itself, shaped by the desires...
-
A Night of Knowing Nothing
Directed by Payal Kapadia • 2021 • France, India
Starring Bhumisuta DasThrough fictional love letters found in a cupboard at the Film and Television Institute of India, we meet L, a film student writing to her estranged lover while he is away. Gradually we’re immersed in the drastic changes tak...
