Kirsten Johnson

Early life

Kirsten Johnson was born in 1965. Her father is C. Richard Johnson, a psychiatrist.

Johnson was raised in Seattle and Wyoming in a Seventh-day Adventist family who placed restrictions on her access to film and television. She had no exposure to the medium until she attended Brown University. At Brown, Johnson was involved in Students Against Apartheid and took classes with Anani Dzidzienyo, who influenced her significantly.

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. She then studied film in Paris, and went on to be a principal cameraperson for a variety of documentaries, traveling to numerous countries to do so. In total, she has over 40 credits as cinematographer. Including other jobs in the camera and electrical department, she has a total of over 70 credits in different movies. Some of her film credits include Derrida (2002), a documentary on French philosopher Jacques Derrida, the documentary Darfur Now (2006), and Pray the Devil Back to Hell (2008) which won the Tribeca Film Festival Best Documentary. She also worked on The Oath (2010) and Citizenfour (2014), both directed by Laura Poitras. The Oath is about Osama bin Laden's driver, Abu Jandal, for which Johnson won an award from Sundance. Citizenfour, which won the 2015 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature, concerns Edward Snowden and his revelations about the NSA. Johnson has shot films about everything from the Evangelical Christian chastity movement (Virgin Tales, 2012), to terrorism in the Middle East (The Oath). Her cinematography is also featured in Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11, the Academy Award-nominated short Asylum, the Emmy-winning Ladies First, and the Sundance premiere documentaries Finding North, This Film Is Not Yet Rated, and American Standoff.

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. 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. She accessed spare footage from the films she shot, and edited portions that were meaningful to her together for the experimental documentary film. Johnson's Cameraperson premiered at Sundance and won Sheffield Doc/Fest's Grand Jury Award in 2016.

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. 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. 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. Her brother, Kirk Johnson, is the Sant Director of Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History.

Johnson co-parents her twins with a married couple, painter Boris Torres and filmmaker Ira Sachs. She, Sachs, and Torres were in similar social circles, became friends, and decided to have the experience of parenting together. They now live in neighboring apartments in Manhattan, and split the twins' time equally between both parties.

References

References

1. Ide, Wendy. (January 29, 2017). "Cameraperson review – a life behind a lens". The Observer.
2. "Review {{!}} 'Dick Johnson is Dead' is a dread-fulfillment fantasy that's thoughtful and wistfully funny". Washington Post.
3. Hornaday, Ann. (October 13, 2016). "Kirsten Johnson's 'Cameraperson' is a poetic primer in documentary filmmaking". [[The Washington Post]].
4. (March 20, 2017). "A one-off journey to the heart of documentary filmmaking".
5. "Documentarian Kirsten Johnson '87 reflects on Brown's influence on her career".
6. "Kirsten Johnson".
7. "Women of Influence: Kirsten Johnson - Australian Cinematographers Society".
8. "Darfur Now". Emol.org.
9. "Pray the Devil back to Hell".
10. MIKE HALE. (May 6, 2010). "Laura Poitras's Documentary on Two Al Qaeda Cases - The New York Times". Movies.nytimes.com.
11. "Kirsten Johnson Pictures 2010 Sundance Film Festival - "The Oath" Portraits". Zimbio.com.
12. [https://zeitgeistfilms.com/film/oath The Oath] {{Webarchive. link. (July 4, 2017 , [[Zeitgeist Films]])
13. "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.
14. Weinberg, Robin. (2017). "Review of Cameraperson dir. by Kirsten Johnson, and: Stories We Tell dir. by Sarah Polley.". Oral History Review.
15. "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.
16. (June 15, 2016). "Kirsten Johnson's Cameraperson wins Sheffield Doc/Fest grand prize". BBC News.
17. Hynes, Eric. "Interview with Kirsten Johnson, Director of The Above".
18. "U.S.Documentary Special Jury Award for Innovation in Nonfiction Storytelling-Dick Johnson is Dead".
19. "Kirsten Johnson - NYU Journalism". Journalism.nyu.edu.
20. (October 2, 2020). "Netflix Doc 'Dick Johnson Is Dead' Is One of 2020's Must-See Films".
21. Hubert, Craig. (September 15, 2016). "At Home With a Very Modern, Very Artistic Family". The New York Times.