No butter in the popcorn

Today I attended my first of the film festival films at the Victoria Theatre. It's the smallest and the probably the oldest, built in 1908. The old worn marquee is charming but nothing is kept up very well. It's old and worn. The concession stand was the worst. I think they offered about four drink options and four things to eat. One size popcorn and no butter. They use butter flavored salt. I had never heard of the theatre before the film festival. I'm glad they keep 100 year old theatres but I wish they was money to keep them looking great inside and out.

Today I saw an independent film called Cameraperson. I'm attracted to movies about movies or filmmakers. This was not so much a documentary but bits of film by an excellent cinematographer who has worked in the industry for 25 years. Kirsten Johnson is credited as the principal cinematographer on more than 40 feature-length documentaries, and has worked with directors such as Michael Moore, Kirby Dick and Laura Poitras, with whom she shared the 2012 Sundance Cinematography award for The Oath.

The documentary was described as: Simultaneously an astute observation of nonfiction filmmaking’s dilemmas, and a wonderfully creative autobiographical collage, Cameraperson is a must-see for all documentary enthusiasts She assembles moments of location shoots—including a birthing clinic in Nigeria, a Bosnian farm, a detention center in Yemen and a boxing ring in Brooklyn. End of program description.

The majority of footage was on the war crimes centered around Foča,Bosnia. Another major part in splintered 5 minute cut backs was about a crime in Texas where she interviewed a Texan lawyer with a case of a man who was dragged in chains behind a car to his death. He talked about his elbows and ankles rubbing away while trying to protect other organs.

I should have paid attention to this one line in the program which said, Rather than employ the obvious tool of narration... That is one of the other things that made a 105 minute film difficult to watch. It seemed like bits and pieces were thrown in the air and then taped together. At first I enjoyed the 5 minute scenes, sometimes longer with the excellent cinematography. I thought, what an interesting life to film all around the world. However, it would jump to another part of the world and into another setting while I was still thinking about the first place. Eventually the film would circle back and repeat locations, although sometimes it wouldn't.

The majority of reloops to another location were to Bosnia to interview Foča massacre survivors. Foča was were a series of killings committed by Serb military. In Wikipedia it says some 2,704 people from Foča are missing or were killed during the massacres period. Additionally, Serb authorities set up locations - commonly described as rape camps - in which hundreds of women were raped. True to the description one gets this information in cut back interview pieces.

There are scenes back and forth to the Nigeria birthing clinic show midwives giving birth to babies and not so capably and with no equipment or sheets. One baby was having trouble breathing and they put it in the back room covered in a blanket explaining to the camera that it needed special oxygen and there wasn't any. So I believe they were leaving it there to die. Remember this is all happening in random 5 minute clips that jump back and forth to different sites.

The cinematography was fabulous although it was much darker topically than I expected. Maybe they could have called it Bits and Pieces of Human Atrocities.

Inexplicably the film takes a bizarre turn toward the end when the cinematographer jumps into loving home clips of her twins in her apartment or and loving moments with her Alzheimer ridden mother. There is also a gross random clip of her father and children finding a dead bird and picking it up wondering what to do with it. The grandfather ends up throwing it in a bush.

I think it shows that narrative is important and a cinematographer needs a writer. However, what do I know? This movie has won two movie festivals awards and has a 100 pct rating on Rotten Tomatoes by reviewers not audience. It is the highest Rotten Tomatoes rating and I've never seen them give that out.

After I had written this blog post I found an interview in Filmmaker Magazine about this movie. The interviewer didn't review the film but asked questions that seemed favorable, yet some answers were telling. There was no official archiving, she didn't do her own editing - she turned it over to an editor in Oakland and let him take over the project. However, some things made a little more sense after reading this. Especially the term In film and television production, 'B-roll' (B roll, or Broll) is supplemental or alternative footage intercut with the main shot. These are the filler background shots that are usually cut down to a few minutes in the film. So in a sense, she is using these leftover B-roll background shots the filmmakers didn't use in their films. Interesting, but doesn't make a good filmclick here for article