Kirsten Johnson
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/67/Kirsten_Johnson_at_MIFF.jpg/220px-Kirsten_Johnson_at_MIFF.jpg)
Kirsten Johnson (born 1965) is an American documentary filmmaker and cinematographer. She is mostly known for her camera work on several well-known feature-length documentaries such as Citizenfour and The Oath. In 2016, she released Cameraperson, a film which consists of various pieces of footage from her decades of work all over the world as a documentary cinematographer. Directed by Johnson herself, Cameraperson went on to be praised for its handling of themes about documentary ethics interwoven with Johnson's personal reflection on her experiences.[1]
Movies that Johnson has either filmed or directed have received numerous nominations and awards over the years, and she is now a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
Early life
Kirsten Johnson was born in 1965. Her father is C. Richard Johnson, a psychiatrist.[2]
Johnson was raised in Seattle
Career
Cinematography
After graduating from Brown University in 1987 with a BA in Fine Arts and Literature, Johnson entered the filmmaking world in West Africa, where she got her start in both fiction and nonfiction genres.
Directing
Johnson has directed 6 films, her most notable being personal collage-style memoir Cameraperson (2016). It captures the connection between the director and the subjects that she had filmed during her years behind the camera.[13] While she worked for 25 years as a cinematographer, she traveled around the world to places such as Bosnia, Darfur, Kabul and Texas. Especially in Bosnia, Afghanistan, and Yemen, she witnessed and captured emotional, sometimes traumatic, events and interviews.[14] She accessed spare footage from the films she shot, and edited portions that were meaningful to her together for the experimental documentary film.[15] Johnson's Cameraperson premiered at Sundance and won Sheffield Doc/Fest's Grand Jury Award in 2016.[16]
In 2015 Johnson released a short film titled The Above. Just like Cameraperson, this film was made up of footage she initially shot for a different film.[17] It focuses on a military surveillance balloon which is flown above the town of Kabul in Afghanistan for unknown reasons. The Above premiered at the New York Film Festival. Additionally, her 1999 film Innocent Until Proven Guilty examines the number of African American men in the U.S. criminal justice system.
Her second documentary, Dick Johnson Is Dead, premiered in 2020 at Sundance Film Festival, where it received a special award for innovation in nonfiction storytelling.[18] The film is a dedication to her father and an exploration of human mortality.
Personal life
Johnson is based in Manhattan where she is an adjunct professor at New York University.[19] Her brother, Kirk Johnson, is the Sant Director of Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History.[20]
Johnson
References
- ISSN 0029-7712. Retrieved December 3, 2019.
- ISSN 0190-8286. Retrieved November 15, 2022.
- ^ a b c "Documentarian Kirsten Johnson '87 reflects on Brown's influence on her career". The Brown Daily Herald. Retrieved November 15, 2022.
- ^ Hornaday, Ann (October 13, 2016). "Kirsten Johnson's 'Cameraperson' is a poetic primer in documentary filmmaking". The Washington Post.
- ^ a b "A one-off journey to the heart of documentary filmmaking". Huck Magazine. March 20, 2017. Retrieved December 3, 2019.
- ^ a b "Kirsten Johnson". IMDb. Retrieved December 3, 2019.
- ^ "Women of Influence: Kirsten Johnson - Australian Cinematographers Society". www.cinematographer.org.au. Retrieved December 3, 2019.
- ^ "Darfur Now". Emol.org. Archived from the original on October 27, 2018. Retrieved January 30, 2017.
- ^ "Pray the Devil back to Hell". www.praythedevilbacktohell.com. Archived from the original on October 26, 2008. Retrieved January 13, 2022.
- ^ MIKE HALE (May 6, 2010). "Laura Poitras's Documentary on Two Al Qaeda Cases - The New York Times". Movies.nytimes.com. Retrieved January 30, 2017.
- ^ "Kirsten Johnson Pictures 2010 Sundance Film Festival - "The Oath" Portraits". Zimbio.com. Retrieved January 30, 2017.
- ^ The Oath Archived July 4, 2017, at the Wayback Machine, Zeitgeist Films
- ^ "Cameraperson review -- a life behind a lens; Documentary-maker Kirsten Johnson's memoir of her experiences filming lets us see the world through her viewfinder". Guardian Newspapers.
- ^ Weinberg, Robin (2017). "Review of Cameraperson dir. by Kirsten Johnson, and: Stories We Tell dir. by Sarah Polley". Oral History Review. 44.
- ^ "Cameraperson review - a beautifully curated collage of outtakes; Cinematographer Kirsten Johnson's 25-year collection of spare documentary footage, premiering at Sundance, offers a fascinating and personal glimpse of the world". Guardian Newspapers.
- ^ "Kirsten Johnson's Cameraperson wins Sheffield Doc/Fest grand prize". BBC News. June 15, 2016. Retrieved June 17, 2016.
- ^ Hynes, Eric. "Interview with Kirsten Johnson, Director of The Above". Field of Vision. Retrieved December 4, 2019.
- ^ "U.S.Documentary Special Jury Award for Innovation in Nonfiction Storytelling-Dick Johnson is Dead". Archived from the original on February 4, 2020. Retrieved October 16, 2020.
- ^ "Kirsten Johnson - NYU Journalism". Journalism.nyu.edu. Retrieved January 30, 2017.
- ^ Zuckerman, Esther. "Netflix Doc 'Dick Johnson Is Dead' Is One of 2020's Must-See Films". Thrillist. Retrieved January 5, 2021.
- ^ ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved December 3, 2019.