After spending nearly the whole day with Kristen Johnson in my “Women in Film” class, visual learning workshop, and the screening and Q&A of Cameraperson (Johnson, 2015) I was amazed at her work and who she is as a person. She taught me so much about cinema during her short hours in Lafayette. I went back and watched All These Sleepless Nights (Marczak, 2016) and I’m still blown away by every single aspect of it. As a striving filmmaker if I was in her position I would be like,”wow I did that.” I hope one day I can travel the country and make films I’m proud of. The visual learning workshop was incredibly insightful and her attentiveness to her surroundings and things like hand gestures blew everybody away. As she mentioned being able to listen, connect, and talk is one of the best skills you can have as a documentarian. She has mastered that skill and you could clearly see that in her film. During the workshop and Q&A, I liked how she would expand on every answer and she was very blunt as well. She didn’t hide anything and you could see that transparency in her film as well.
When I began watching Cameraperson I had no idea what I was getting myself into and that’s how I usually like seeing films. That’s why I avoid seeing trailers, especially long ones. One of the very first things I noticed was the sound. It was very in your face and added to the different stories she was telling. She also focused on hands a lot and used them to show emotions. For example, the girl in the women’s clinic who was going to abort her second child was telling her narrative with her hands, more than with her words. Through her hands you could tell how scared, insecure and anxious she was. It made me want to hold her fidgeting hands and tell her that everything would be okay. There were moments that made me want to look away because I felt like they were happening right there and then. For example when the child was using the ax or when the nurse was delivering babies and was putting the child upside down. In our culture, those are things that we don’t see every day and I was in shock by seeing some of those things. When the kid was using the ax my heart was racing and I wanted to jump into the screen and stop him. Two other stories that reinforced the idea that as a documentarian you put yourself in very uncomfortable and unexpected situations was when James lost his boxing match, and when the woman was grieving her mother’s suicide. Like some people mentioned the woman’s unexpected rage left us with our mouth opened. I never thought that she would start acting like that so quickly, but you could feel the rawness in her emotion. It is something she needed to let out. Also, when James lost his match you could feel his rage coming out of the screen and it personally worried me if Kristen Johnson was okay. It seemed like he was ready to punch the camera any moment. Those are the type of situations that as a documentarian you have to be ready for but you can also never be fully ready for them. You have to be good at reading people’s body language and cues. Kristen is truly amazing at doing that and more.