Some movies feel like they're made for you-- they perfectly reflect your thoughts and feelings at the moment in your life when you view them. Cameraperson is that for me, now. It elaborates and ruminates on methods of filmmaking that I practice in my life. 

Assembled from pieces of extra footage collected by veteran documentary DP Kirsten Johnson, and thoughtfully edited together by Nels Bangerter, Cameraperson moves through distinct times and places, moments of beauty, horror, and intimacy, to create what Johnson calls in the opening intertitle a memoir. Johnson examines herself and her craft, for us in the theater and for herself. It is an appreciation of the self and its work, a life on film and a life lived through filmmaking (it ranks among the great documentaries about filmmakers, like Beaches of Agnés). It is both a personal and a personable watch, focused on the lives Johnson has come into contact with and the little moments that get cut from the full documentaries in which she reacts to and engages with these people.

Occassionally, I practice editing by pointing the camera at my family and friends around me. I edit the footage for practice, and I keep the end products mostly to myself. I try to make it watchable for the sake of it, but I by no means consider it rigorous art; it is assembled B-roll at best. But Johnson, in her beautiful, breathing film, has made me rethink the nature of art and the smallest moments that go into its composition.