Emmy, Sundance Winner Kirsten Johnson on Cinema as a Collective Endeavor
variety.comLise Pedersen Opening her masterclass at doc film festival Visions du Réel in Switzerland, cinematographer and filmmaker Kirsten Johnson – an Emmy and Sundance award winner for “Dick Johnson Is Dead” – started by naming each and every member of the technical crew on set. “What I often find upsetting with cinema is that we forget to acknowledge all the people it takes to make these moments together.
I learnt that through being a cameraperson, and I’m interested in understanding why we want to reduce it to just one person, because there’s something beautiful about the fact that all of these humans, collectively, help us be here today,” she said, employing her favorite word to describe her work, “Cameraperson,” which is also the title of second feature film.
Over three decades, Johnson has worked on some 60 films as a cinematographer, for the likes of Michael Moore (“Fahrenheit 9/11,” Palme d’Or winner in 2004) and Laura Poitras (“Citizenfour,” 2015 Academy Award winner for Best Documentary Feature), made a couple of shorts and two feature films: the above-mentioned “Cameraperson” in 2016, and 2020’s “Dick Johnson Is Dead.” “I’m very glad to be the ‘one’ today,” she continued with characteristic self-deprecating humor, “but I’m throwing it back out to the collectivity to say that we are making this moment together.”Johnson had set the tone for the masterclass.
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