In 1993, Alex shoots an interview with her best friend Jim as he tries to recount his life as he is dying. In 2004, she re-works this haunted video, playing it in real-time but letting bleed in a host of present day interviewees who also reflect upon AIDS, death, activism, and video. What remains is this woman's contemplative, loving memorial to one gay man lost to AIDS that also marks what changes and lasts after death, across time, and because of videotape.
As a visually radical memoir, CAMERAPERSON draws on the remarkable footage that filmmaker Kirsten Johnson has shot and reframes it in ways that illuminate moments and situations that have personally affected her. What emerges is an elegant meditation on the relationship between truth and the camera frame, as Johnson transforms scenes that have been presented on Festival screens as one kind of truth into another kind of story—one about personal journey, craft, and direct human connection.
