Tag: Kirsten Johnson

REVIEW: Dick Johnson is Dead [2020]

Jared Mobarak

I’ve always wanted to be in the movies. A steady stream of phone calls about Dick Johnson‘s growing forgetfulness eventually forced his daughter to admit a sad truth: it wasn’t safe for him to continue living alone. Anyone who’s seen Kirsten Johnson‘s previous documentary Cameraperson knows this reality will hit even harder considering she’s gone through similar circumstances before. It’s only been seven years since her mother Katie Jo passed away after a long bout with Alzheimer’s, so to turn around and have to watch her father suffer from dementia…

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REVIEW: Cameraperson [2016]

Jared Mobarak

“You’re making me cry even though I don’t understand the language” The camera doesn’t lie. It captures private moments, immortalizes public, and adds ten pounds (so maybe it does). It shows a world we can never see: at once untouched perfection and fabricated by the operator’s gaze. And as those among us age and forget, the camera proves a tool of permanence. Cinematographer Kirsten Johnson‘s mother battles Alzheimer’s—losing time, place, and self—while she endures journalistic accounts of terror most wish to leave behind. Just because what Johnson filmed during a…

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