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When we talk about streaming culture, we’re usually enthusing about what’s new, but one of the best things about streaming is how it’s made old and obscure cult hits available to a new generation. Presenting Cult Corner: your weekly look into hidden gems and long-lost curiosities that you can find on streaming.
For every minute of a documentary, there’s roughly an hour of footage audiences will never see. That’s the idea that Kirsten Johnson’s documentary Cameraperson plays with. It’s a story told through abandoned footage and cut takes, and it’s a oddly comforting and beautiful one.
You may not know Johnson’s name, but there’s a very good chance you’re familiar with her work. The accomplished filmmaker has worked on everything from recent big-name documentaries like Risk and Citizenfour to older critically-acclaimed movies like This Film Is Not Yet Rated and The Invisible War. She’s travelled everywhere from Darfur to Brooklyn, documenting her own brand of deeply intimate stories. Though Cameraperson is unlike any other film Johnson has worked on, it still retains the filmmaker’s delicate yet insightful touch.
There’s a lot going on in Cameraperson with very little explanation. At the most, the documentary will present a location card before flitting between interviews of a woman contemplating an abortion to stormy skies and a child being born. The film has an ethereal and boundary-free feeling to it, but Cameraperson works. Through its lack of explanation, the film makes a beautiful, unspoken argument for why all people are connected. In one especially pointed and moving scene, the film cycles through footage of places where terrible tragedies have taken place. At one moment, the camera stares at the stark floor tiles of the Partizan Sports Hall, a place where a disturbing number of Witness 99 and other Muslim women and girls were imprisoned and raped. The next, the camera focuses on a praying Mary at the Nyamata Church, which is where 10,000 Rwandan Tutsis were massacred. The documentary then cuts to a young man explaining how his brother died in a bomb explosion. It’s a harrowing transition from tragedies that are too large to comprehend to one that is explained in bleak, graphic detail.
In between all of these cuts, transitions, and lost footage, Cameraperson starts to reveal more about Johnson than any talking head interview would allow. The filmmaker rarely speaks, but by seeing the subjects that interest her and the tender but respectfully distant way she structures her shots, Cameraperson watches like an open book into one artist. There’s something beautifully raw about this behind-the-scenes film that feels as comforting as it is at times difficult to watch. If you consider yourself to be a documentary aficionado or just a documentary fan, it’s a soulful and elegant must-watch.
