Before going into see this film, I didn’t really do my homework on the film, which I probably should have done before going into it. I knew that Kirsten was a very talented documentarian, and I was extremely excited to view her work. After viewing Cameraperson (2016), I was taken aback by how good it was. My favorite part about this film is the amount of symbolism she portrayed. Someone in the class beat me to it, but I was going to ask her “why hands?” What I loved most about the scenes that portrayed hands was the fact that the hands told the story within itself. If the audio was muted, viewers could still tell by the hands what the person was feeling. I also loved the fact that there were many cultures involved in the film. There were countries portrayed in the film that I knew nothing about, and it was interesting to learn about them.
It was also really interesting to see Kirsten put in film from her personal life as well as her traveling lifestyle. I thought she did a great job meshing the two together to create this film. Most of what she filmed must have been hard: from filming her mother who had Alzheimer’s, to the hospital in the middle east. I couldn’t even look at the screen when the nurse was holding the baby by its leg. I have no idea how Kirsten was able to film that without showing her emotions about it. I loved how she told us after that “the speed that’s happening in you is different than the world”. I really appreciated her personality and her willingness to learn who we are, even though we have a lot to learn from her. I very much enjoyed her film and I hope to view her other films soon too.