After watching The Above, I felt similar to how I did after reading Orwell’s 1984. I was uncomfortable and this US blimp feels like an intruder. I would hate to imagine how the Afghanis feel every day when they wake up. Everything that lies above the surface of the earth, the sky, is meant to be liberating. But in this case, it wasn’t.
I enjoyed how Kirsten captured shots of random carrots, people driving, kids playing on a hill, and more shots of objects and humans in relation to this hovering blimp. She plays with the distance between her, the camera, and this blimp. It follows her and everyone else in Kabul. People go about with their day to day lives, but the blimp remains up in the air, watching them and taking over their free space.
Her way of playing with distance between her and the blimp makes me think of the parallel relationship between a camera and a human being. When we take videos and pictures of a person or an animal, they’re aware that we’re in their sphere. We try to be as unseen as possible with our camera when trying to get a shot of the dog catching a bone or lady working on her sowing machine. Yet, they know that they’re being watched by 2 sets of eyes, ours and the camera lens. Even if we aren’t talking with a person, we are still interacting with them by standing right there. It is our choice, or KJ’s to decide whether we want to engage further with our subject and get to know them better or just stand in a corner and film from a distance. This reminds of when Mike and I filmed last Monday, KJ kept encouraging us to follow her instead of standing at the bottom of the steps and move the camera instead of our bodies to follow her. She didn’t want us to be the blimp. Just as how she engages with people, she wanted the camera to engage with her interaction of engagement (awkwardly phrased). The camera and the documentarian naturally builds a relationship with who they engage with, and it is our choice whether we choose to be the blimp or person.