An unusual and moving documentary in which a filmmaker creates a portrait of the artist

Kirsten Johnson calls her documentary, Cameraperson (2016), a "memoir," and I think that's about right; it's entirely composed of documentary footage she has shot over the course of a long career - there are no scripted scenes nor is there any interpolated narration - and she has arranged these many segments into what amounts to a recollection of her professional work and, to a lesser degree, of her personal life. Her footage includes some scenes shot in the most dangerous places on earth, including Yemen, Monrovia, Afghanistan, Darfur - with a strong focus on Serbia after the Bosnian war. A pervasive interest is the torture and abuse of prisoners, especially women, and the "ethnic cleansing" of the Moslem community in Serbia. But this film is not a documentary "about" these topics; it's about the life of a cameraperson, ever working, facing danger, building relationships, or not, with the subjects, taking risks, and blending in. These segments are all "raw" footage, so we hear Johnson in the background and other ambient matters that surely were cut from the finished documentary; a great and whimsical example at the outset: a beautiful shot of lightning striking on the Missouri prairie, followed by a few camera-shaking sneezes from Johnson! There are also touching moments that she films of her parents and kids, particularly moving is the scene of her mother, suffering from the last states of Alzheimers. By the end, a final visit to a family in Serbia, makes clear the message of the film: though Johnson films some of the deepest horrors of war and racism, she also builds bonds with her subjects and presents an uplifting view of life: sometimes justice prevails, people endure, life comes into the world (great and troubling birthing sequence in a small clinic in Liberia, for ex.).