WOW. So. Many. Emotions.
That is the only way to truly describe how I felt after sitting down for what felt like the longest, most emotional roller coaster of my life, also known as the documentary Cameraperson. To say this film was incredible is an understatement. It was absolutely genius and accomplished exactly what a documentary should accomplish: it made us audience members truly feel and experience authentic moments of the human experience. I felt things I never knew I felt, and I cannot even imagine how KJ deals with everything that she has seen in her life. I loved that most of the scenes were simply taken from footage she had shot for other documentaries. Therefore, she was not “filming with a intended purpose” but rather editing and weaving together a new story. Each story somehow wove beautifully into the following story and I liked trying to get in KJ’s mind and see how she saw the world. I think one of the best parts of the documentary was that a lot of the connections were truly open to interpretation and I found this out after discussing the film with some friends in the class. We all related to different elements in the film, because we all had different backgrounds and different experiences that we took with us to the viewing of the documentary. For example, some of the hardest scenes for me to watch were the ones of her mother, because I have a grandmother with severe Alzheimer’s who is on the brink of dying.
I truly appreciated how KJ took the time afterwards to have a lengthy Q &A session with us, and how high-energy she was throughout it all, even after she had spent so much time with students during the day.
After the viewing and the Q & A, I felt physically and emotionally drained. It also didn’t help that I checked my phone after class only to find messages about an important incident with one of my old summer camp campers that I needed to tend to ASAP….
All in all, I am blessed for the experience of Cameraperson and I definitely think that I learned a lot about where the bar is set for a truly incredible documentary in which the conversation can continue on forever.