Person Behind The Camera Quotes

Sometimes, when you are reading a book you are enjoying very much, you begin thinking so hard about the characters and the story that you might forget all about the author, even if he is in grave danger and would very much appreciate your help. The same thing can happen if you are looking at a photograph. You might think so hard about whatever is in the photograph that you forget all about the person behind the camera.

Behind every fortunate woman is someone who believes in her - someone sitting in the bleachers, quietly applauding every success, shouldering every disappointment, waiting in the twilight or the drizzle after everyone else is gone, loving her. If she is really lucky, that person is her husband.

You don't need years to know you found the right person.

I had a colorful personality, and now, I had the makeup to match it!

We drove east back down to Santa Fe in the splendid evening air, all roses and ochres and greens, with the tree-covered folds in the mountains behind the town lying like a gigantic crumpled velvet rug; a limpid and cloudless winter sky above, a light no camera has ever captured… I have never quite understood why some places exert this deep personal attraction, why at them one’s past seems in some mysterious way to meet one’s future, one that was somehow always to be there as well as being there in reality

Barry Soetoro’s declaration of martial law stunned the nation. His reason—the need to protect the nation from terrorism—met with widespread skepticism. After all, at least three of the Saturday jihadists had entered with Soetoro’s blessing, over the objections of many politicians and the outraged cries of all those little people out there in the heartland, all those potential victims no one really gave a damn about. His suspension of the writ of habeas corpus went over the heads of most of the millions of people in his audience, since they didn’t know what the writ was or signified. He didn’t stop there. He adjourned Congress until he called it back into session, and announced an indefinite stay on all cases before the courts in which the government was a defendant. His announcement of press and media censorship “until the crisis is past” met with outrage, especially among the talking heads on television, who went ballistic. Within thirty minutes, the listening audience found out what the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus meant: FBI agents arrested select television personalities, including some who were literally on camera, and took them away. Fox News went off the air. Most of the other networks contented themselves with running the tape of Soetoro behind the podium making his announcement, over and over, without comment. During the day FBI agents arrested dozens of prominent conservative commentators and administration critics across the nation, including Rush Limbaugh, Mark Levin, Michelle Malkin, George Will, Ann Coulter, Bill O’Reilly, Glenn Beck, Ralph Peters, Judge Jeanine Pirro, Matt Drudge, Thomas Sowell, Howard Stern, and Charles Krauthammer, among others. They weren’t given a chance to remain silent in the future, but were arrested and taken away to be held in an unknown location until Soetoro decided to release them.

THIS IS A BOOK ABOUT FRENCH CINEMA, specifically the women of today’s French cinema—a subject as vital as life and as irresistible as movies. Yet many Americans, unfamiliar with French film, will hear “women of today’s French cinema” and immediately imagine something forbidding or austere. Other more refined cineastes may know and appreciate the French movies that play at art houses and arrive on DVD in this country, but they can’t know the full story. They are not in a position to know that what they are seeing is just a hint of something vast and extraordinary. The full story is that for the last two decades France has been in the midst of an explosion of female talent. What is happening in France today is a blossoming of female brilliance and originality of a kind that has never happened anywhere or at any period of film history, with but one glorious exception—in the Hollywood of the 1930s. Indeed, today’s Hepburns, Davises, Crawfords, Garbos, and Stanwycks are not American. They’re French. They are working constantly, appearing up to three or four times each year in films geared to their star personalities and moral meaning. These films, often intelligent, personal, and insightful investigations into what it means to be human in the twenty-first century, are the kinds of films that many Americans want to see. And they wonder why no one is making them. But people are making them, just not in the United States. Moreover, women are not only working in front of the camera in France but behind it, too. Important actresses are writing and directing films, and many of the country’s biggest and most acclaimed directors are women. Truly, this is a halcyon period, happening as we speak, and to miss this moment would be like living in 1920 and never seeing a silent comedy, or like living in 1950 and never seeing a film noir. It would be to miss one of the most enriching cinematic movements of your time. Yet most Americans, virtually all Americans, have been missing it.

It was a brave new world that I found myself in. At night I would hear the sounds of the fruit bats as they came into the trees. Also in the mix were the strange, far-off grunts of the koalas as they sang out their mating calls. Herds of wild pigs passed right behind the tent. Venturing outside in the middle of the night with my dunny roll to go use a bush was a daunting experience. Steve was a natural in front of the camera. John had to give him only one important piece of advice. “Stevo,” John instructed, “there are three people in this documentary. There’s you, Terri, and the camera. Treat the camera just like another person.” Steve’s energy and enthusiasm took over. He completely relaxed, and he managed to just be himself--which was true of his entire career. This wasn’t just a film trip, it was also our honeymoon. Steve would sometimes escape the camera crew and take us up a tributary to be alone. We watched the fireflies come out. I’d never seen fireflies in Oregon. The magical little insects glowed everywhere, in the bushes and in the air. The darker it got, the brighter their blue lights burned on and off. I had arrived in a fairyland.

Within several minutes, we’re at the front of the line. I assume we’re going to keep walking, but the young English couple in front of us has me take their picture, and then they offer to take ours. I open my mouth to decline, but Bruno bursts out with a “Grazie!” and unhooks the camera from my neck, handing it to the woman. He leads me to the bench and we sit, the sides of our legs touching. My stomach clenches. This is the kissing bench. Not a single couple before us has smiled for the camera. They kiss for the camera. My eyes lock on the lens like a deer in the headlights. I force a smile, a big one, with teeth. My head nearly vibrates with the strain. This is fine. We’re going to break the trend and smile. Absolutely no kissing. The woman lifts my camera to her face. “One, two--” On two, Bruno reaches behind me and cups the back of my head in his hand, turning me to face him. His other hand is on my cheek. His lips press onto mine. The camera clicks. “WOOOOOO!” echoes around us. One person claps. Bruno pulls away but stares into my eyes for a moment before hopping up and getting my camera back for me. My head is spinning. I’ve been kissed. In Italy. By an Italian! I remain seated, stupefied, until a couple shoos me away for their turn, and soon we’re walking the next section of the path along with the English couple. Bruno chats with them--heavy accent enforced--but their words turn to garble. All I hear is He kissed me. Bruno I-don’t-even-know-how-to-pronounce-his-last-name kissed me! And it was short. Too short. No. Too long. Shouldn’t have happened. Chiara will kill us if she finds out. But she won’t find out. I’ll hide the picture from her. I’ll delete the picture! No, I have to show Morgan. And I want proof for myself. I’ll just make sure Chiara doesn’t see it. It only happened because it’s what you do at the kissing bench when you’re sitting next to the hottest Italian boy you’ve ever seen. I just have to stay away from that bench.

I had no idea where my bravery had gone. Had I ever really been brave? I don’t think so. I never had to be brave. I settled for being invisible, the person behind the camera. How I wished I could be invisible now

At the end of the scene, when Kathy kisses Don, Cosmo objects, thereby provoking Kathy to kiss him as well, to which he responds with girlish abashment (the exchange replays the part of “Good Mornin’” when Kathy sits first on Don’s knee, then on Cosmo’s). 2.5 2.6 2.7 Yet Don and Kathy do not yet engage fully as romantic partners, which becomes clear during the following number, Kelly’s famous solo rendition of the title song, “Singin’ in the Rain,” introduced by his deliberately isolating himself (kissing Kathy good night and then waving off the cab driver). Alone on the rain-drenched sound stage (assuming we have learned to recognize it as such from “You Were Meant for Me”), he clarifies the MERM-related function of such effects, which seem in themselves to demand that he sing. The coordination of MERM and Hollywood-style special effects is particularly close in this number, as he soon leaves the song behind, first to explore the sets and props conveniently at his disposal, and then to match the music’s crescendo with an expansive embrace of the larger space. Here, the camera cranes outward, and Kelly breaks through into a moment of “dancing-sublime,” when his dancing seems either to revert or to come full circle, returning to the primitive urge that gave it birth (thus his stomping and jumping in the puddle like an adolescent boy).34 But the number, through its supreme narcissism, actually does more to inhibit than to advance the plot.

As soon as I was in the open desert the atmosphere changed completely. Anyone who has been in sand dunes will tell you that it is an experience so magical, so personal, yet so otherworldly, that it is never forgotten. The hairdryer heat, the stillness and the beauty of the contrasting horizon; dazzling, clear blue sky turning to pristine yellow/white sand produces a feeling of such vast immenseness that you cannot help but feel humbled. As I was riding I imagined an overhead camera view of me on the bike, the camera slowly pulling further and further back, a snaking tyre trail disturbing the patterns in the sand behind me, until I disappeared like a grain of sand in the ever- changing dune landscape. I defy anyone not to feel small and insignificant in this environment.

Dear Voyagers, Your cameras have shown us the vastness of the universe, Our eyes too can gaze upon the heavens and revel in nature, But behind our eyes, There’s something called a mind that processes it all. What we call the mind Spins countless tales and stories, With such variety that one could say, For every human that has ever lived, there exists a different image, emotion, analysis, and worldview, and this can be beautiful and at the same time terrifying. I imagine mapping the universe completely, Discovering life in other systems and galaxies, Might be much sooner than charting the map that could explain human existence. So many questions remain for me, Like if, In the coming decades, poverty is eradicated, Freedom is universal, Mars is colonized, and people live there, Cities rise above Venus, Plant-based diets replace meat, Equality reaches every person and no one is questioned for their beliefs, orientations, or thoughts, Diseases are cured, Physical labor becomes meaningless, and robots end the hardship of human toil, Earth’s climate change is halted, Firearm possession is made free, and today’s concerns are all resolved—will everyone then live in peace? My mind, my eyes, they know the answer: “No.” Probably then, Conspiracy theorists Would say it all happened in a studio, Some would claim that veganism’s goal is to destroy chakras, Others would start revolts against order and law, criticizing even that beautiful state. This dissatisfaction doesn’t belong to any specific class or group, It’s what we all are. Environment and culture matter, but I think even if a brain chip were made To transfer every piece of knowledge on Earth, All fields of science, memories, Experiences, languages, and the stories of every civilization, every human, and everything ever experienced to our minds, We’d still harbor doubt. Our efforts to prove ourselves to each other Will be in vain. Perhaps the right path Is to continue and enjoy the unknown, Or maybe to accept and find joy in never truly experiencing joy. I play Hans Zimmer’s “Stay,” Yet my mind continues to drift, Time passes, Those around me age as I move forward towards an unknown destination. Perhaps someone, something, 4.5 billion light years away, Is staring at a point in the sky, They don’t know I’m here in an existential crisis, That Earth is in a fight for survival, How I envy them, Staring into that dark spot in the sky, They too are fortunate for not existing in this moment, Or for their light not having reached me. If Earth’s light reaches them, They would surely grieve for these restless, lost souls, For human history is tied to sorrow, pain, separation, and nothingness. Perhaps the Big Crunch, Absolute nothingness, Is the only cure for this pain— The pain of being and existing. Dear Voyagers, When your signal to Earth is lost, It will feel like the death of a loved one, Even though I know you’re alive somewhere, traversing an unknown path, Something I doubt will happen after human death, And even if it does, It wouldn’t lessen the grief of those left behind who have yet to join that unknown journey. I fear oblivion, I fear the oblivions that disappear from history and memories, as if they never were, Like the meal of a Native American grandmother a thousand years ago, Or the kiss of two lovers and the story of their union and parting, never recorded anywhere.

Soul of the 20th Century Behind a dusty glass case at the Henry Ford Museum outside Detroit, lies a sealed test tube. It contains the last breath of one Thomas Alva Edison, The Wizard of Menlo Park, whose legacy included 2,332 patents among which were the phonograph, the movie camera and the light bulb. Henry Ford believed the soul of a person resides in their last breath and Henry captured the last breath of his best friend Tom. Most visitors of the museum choose the Ford Rouge Factory Tour to catch a glimpse of an assembly line, neglecting that inside this modest showcase lies imprisoned the most inventive Soul of the 20th century, captured before it could ascend to heaven. Visitors, if you see the test tube, break it and set the Wizard free!

You can return to Luanda, but all the cameras must remain behind.’ Not surprisingly, the three television crews, including a Brazilian team which had come straight from the airport, debate the issue strenuously, but theirs is a lost cause. Surely they can leave their film behind and take the cameras, we protest, but the commander has said that everything is to remain behind. Orders from headquarters. A crowd of soldiers raise their weapons to stress the point. Rambo is going ballistic, shouting that the camera is his personal property and it cost many thousands of dollars. He is not helping his case. UNITA soldiers rarely disobey orders, and telling them how much his camera is worth does not seem the best of strategies.

But the camera is just a tool, Rania. It's the eye of a person behind it that matters.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, whether it's the person behind the camera or the viewer looking at the picture.

This story created a sensation when it was first told. It appeared in the papers and many big Physicists and Natural Philosophers were, at least so they thought, able to explain the phenomenon. I shall narrate the event and also tell the reader what explanation was given, and let him draw his own conclusions. This was what happened. A friend of mine, a clerk in the same office as myself, was an amateur photographer; let us call him Jones. Jones had a half plate Sanderson camera with a Ross lens and a Thornton Picard behind lens shutter, with pneumatic release. The plate in question was a Wrattens ordinary, developed with Ilford Pyro Soda developer prepared at home. All these particulars I give for the benefit of the more technical reader. Mr. Smith, another clerk in our office, invited Mr. Jones to take a likeness of his wife and sister-in-law. This sister-in-law was the wife of Mr. Smith's elder brother, who was also a Government servant, then on leave. The idea of the photograph was of the sister-in-law. Jones was a keen photographer himself. He had photographed every body in the office including the peons and sweepers, and had even supplied every sitter of his with copies of his handiwork. So he most willingly consented, and anxiously waited for the Sunday on which the photograph was to be taken. Early on Sunday morning, Jones went to the Smiths'. The arrangement of light in the verandah was such that a photograph could only be taken after midday; and so he stayed there to breakfast. At about one in the afternoon all arrangements were complete and the two ladies, Mrs. Smiths, were made to sit in two cane chairs and after long and careful focussing, and moving the camera about for an hour, Jones was satisfied at last and an exposure was made. Mr. Jones was sure that the plate was all right; and so, a second plate was not exposed although in the usual course of things this should have been done. He wrapped up his things and went home promising to develop the plate the same night and bring a copy of the photograph the next day to the office. The next day, which was a Monday, Jones came to the office very early, and I was the first person to meet him. "Well, Mr. Photographer," I asked "what success?" "I got the picture all right," said Jones, unwrapping an unmounted picture and handing it over to me "most funny, don't you think so?" "No, I don't ... I think it is all right, at any rate I did not expect anything better from you ...", I said. "No," said Jones "the funny thing is that only two ladies sat ..." "Quite right," I said "the third stood in the middle." "There was no third lady at all there ...", said Jones. "Then you imagined she was there, and there we find her ..." "I tell you, there were only two ladies there when I exposed" insisted Jones. He was looking awfully worried. "Do you want me to believe that there were only two persons when the plate was exposed and three when it was developed?" I asked. "That is exactly what has happened," said Jones. "Then it must be the most wonderful developer you used, or was it that this was the second exposure given to the same plate?" "The developer is the one which I have been using for the last three years, and the plate, the one I charged on Saturday night out of a new box that I had purchased only on Saturday afternoon." A number of other clerks had come up in the meantime, and were taking great interest in the picture and in Jones' statement. It is only right that a description of the picture be given here for the benefit of the reader. I wish I could reproduce the original picture too, but that for certain reasons is impossible. When the plate was actually exposed there were only two ladies, both of whom were sitting in cane chairs. When the plate was developed it was found that there was in the picture a figure, that of a lady, standing in the middle. She wore a broad-edged dhoti (the reader should not forget that all the characters are Indians), only the upper half of her

On the other hand, when the labor unions spoke, people listened. This was because if people didn’t listen, they would get pummeled by goons, who were twice as big as the person getting beaten down. Gary witnessed this first hand, a week after he began to help. He accompanied them to a convenience store, where they were looking for the store owner to convince him to pay his employees more than just minimum wage. Gary was told to shut off the video cameras recording everything inside the store. He went over to the store clerk behind the counter, and threatened the clerk with bodily harm, to get the clerk to reveal where the camera was so that it could be turned off. The clerk immediately told him, so Gary found the camera and turned it off. He also told the clerk to not bother calling the police, because the police weren’t going to be coming anyway.

The girl who would only appear in school plays if she had a non-speaking part was now centre stage. It took, by her own admission, six years before she felt comfortable appearing in her starring role. Fortunately for her the camera had already fallen in love with the new royal cover girl. However nervous she may have felt inside, her warm smile and unaffected manner were a photographer’s delight. For once the camera did lie, not about the beauty she was becoming but in camouflaging the vulnerable personality behind her effortless capacity to dazzle. She believes that she was able to smile through the pain thanks to qualities she inherited from her mother. When friends ask how she was able to display such a sunny public countenance she says: “I’ve got what my mother has got. However bloody you are feeling you can put on the most amazing show of happiness. My mother is an expert at that and I’ve picked it up. It kept the wolves from the door.

An incident which meant a great deal to Diana took place in that same hospital away from the cameras, smiling dignitaries and the watchful public. The drama began uneventfully three days earlier in a back yard in Balderton, a village near Newark when housewife Freda Hickling collapsed with a brain haemorrhage. When Diana first saw her behind the screens in the intensive care unit she was on a life-support system. Her husband Peter sat with his wife, holding her hand. Diana, who was visiting patients in the hospital, had been already been told by the consultant that there was little hope of recovery. She quietly asked Peter if she should join him. For the next two hours she sat holding the hands of Peter and Freda Hickling before the specialist informed Peter that his wife was dead. Diana then joined Peter, his stepson Neil and Neil’s girlfriend Sue in a private room. Sue, who was so shocked at seeing Freda Hickling on a life-support machine, did not recognize Diana at first, vaguely thinking she was someone from television. “Just call me Diana,” said the Princess. She chatted about everyday matters; the size of the hospital, Prince Charles’s arm and asked about Neil’s forestry business. Eventually Diana decided that Peter could do with a large gin and asked her detective to find one. When he failed to reappear, the Princess successfully found one herself. Peter, a 53-year-old former council worker, recalls: “She was trying to keep our spirits up. For somebody who didn’t know anything about us she was a real professional at handling people and making quick decisions about them. Diana did a great job to keep Neil calm. By the time we left he was chatting to Diana as though he had known her all his life and gave her a kiss on the cheek as we walked down the steps.” His sentiments are endorsed by his stepson, Neil. He says: “She was a very caring, understanding person, somebody you can rely on. She understood about death and grief.

Instead of hiding bodies in mass graves, corpses were triumphantly displayed, as when the Jalisco New Generation (while still part of El Chapo’s Sinaloa cartel) dumped the thirty-five bodies on an avenue in Veracruz in September 2011. In reply, the Zetas scattered twenty-six corpses in Jalisco and a dozen in Sinaloa. On closer inspection, the bodies were those of ordinary citizens, not criminals: they were workers and students who had been abducted and murdered and displayed in order to strike fear in the heart of anyone who doubted the murderous resolve of the Zetas... In To Die in Mexico: Dispatches from Inside the Drug War, John Gibler writes about a related series of bizarre and violent episodes that took place in Torreón, in Coahuila state, bordering Texas: “Who would believe, for example, that the warden of a state prison would let convicted killers out at night and loan them official vehicles, automatic assault rifles, and bulletproof vests, so that they could gun down scores of innocent people in a neighboring state and then quickly hop back over the state line and into prison, behind bars, a perfect alibi. Who would believe that a paramilitary drug-trafficking organization formed by ex−Special Forces of the Mexican Army would kidnap a local cop and torture him into confessing all of the above details about the prisoners’ death squad, videotape the confession, execute the cop on camera with a shot to the heart, and then post the video on YouTube? Who could fathom that the federal attorney general would, within hours of the video-taped confession and execution being posted online, arrest the warden, and then a few days later hold a press conference fully acknowledging that the prisoners’ death squad had operated for months, killing ten people in a bar in January 2010, eight people in a bar in May 2010, and seventeen people at a birthday party in July?” Yet all of this actually happened. During April 2012, when El Chapo was at war with the Zetas, fourteen torsos — armless and legless bodies — were found in a car by the side of the road in Nuevo Laredo. Dead Zetas. Some of the torsos were in the trunk, for which there is a specific narco term: encajuelado (“trunked”; therefore, trunks trunked). Soon after, in Michoacán state, the Zetas met their match in the person of Nazario Moreno (called El Más Loco, the Craziest One), leader of the ruthless Templarios, the Knights Templar cartel, whose recruits were required to eat human flesh—their victims’— as part of their initiation rites. When Moreno was gunned down by the Mexican army in 2014, the Zetas flourished, and remain dominant. But there was a posthumous bonus for the Craziest One: he was promoted to sainthood. In and around his birthplace in Apatzingán, shrines and altars were erected to Saint Nazario, the dead capo represented as a holy figure in robes, venerated by credulous Michoacanos.

It was one of those broadcasts where we didn't really need to say much. The pictures were gripping, none more so than the two young princes, William and Harry, walking behind their mother's horse-drawn funeral cortege. Atop her coffin, in plain view of the cameras, was an envelope - Alison read out what it said, simply, "Mummy". For everyone watching, in person or at home, it was a moment of high emotion. As for me, so was our location in front of Buckingham Palace. It was, almost to the very spot, where I had stood sixteen years before, watching along with the world as she passed by on the way to her wedding. Now there I was, watching her casket pass by on the way to her funeral.

How much of the person behind the camera can be seen in the works? Is one hidden behind them or on the contrary do they unveil you? I think they do. The narrator is the real main character.

COVID-19 outbreak made them a norm of public life. Many also wore helmets and carried melee weapons. Together, the crowd of around four hundred brought traffic to a standstill—by now a regular occurrence in the City of Roses, as Portland is known by. As usual, the police stayed away. They knew whom the streets belonged to. Working as a journalist with a phone and a new GoPro camera, I slowly made my way toward the front of the crowd. Some of the protesters recognized me. They glared and whispered in the ears of their comrades. Luis Enrique Marquez looked right at me. The 48-year-old Rose City Antifa member has been arrested so many times at violent protests in Portland over the past few years that he no longer bothers to wear a mask. Still, I ignored the stares and continued forward. By this point, the crowd’s chants had changed. “No hate! No fear!” they began shouting. Before I made it much farther, someone—or something—hit me hard in the back of the head. I was nearly knocked to the ground from the impact. Never having been in a fight, I naively asked myself in the moment: “Did someone just trip and fall into me?” Before I could turn around to look, a sea of bodies dressed in black surrounded me. In the background, I could still hear the crowd chant, “No hate!” Ironically, all I saw next—and felt—was the pure embodiment of hatred. Staring at an amorphous mob of faceless shadows, I froze. Suddenly, clenched fists repeatedly struck my face and head from all directions. My right knee buckled from the impact. The masked attackers wore tactical gloves—gloves hardened with fiberglass on the knuckles. It’s likely some of them used brass knuckles as well. I put my arms up to surrender, but this only signaled to them to beat me more ferociously. Someone then snatched my camera—my evidence. I desperately tried but failed to hold on to it. The masked thief melted into the crowd, a function of the “black bloc.” Another person ran up and kicked me twice in the groin. Someone bashed me on the head from behind with a stiff placard or sign.

phone, twisted it out of her hand, and slammed it on the hook. “I cry good, don’t I?” she asked with a grin, and she was out the door.   “Davenport, Davenport,” Daniel moaned. He gripped handfuls of hair on the side of his head as he watched Jennifer finish the broadcast. “ . . . called by some the smartest man in the department, told me personally that he did not believe that Smithe is guilty of the spectacular murders and that he fears the premature arrest could destroy Smithe’s burgeoning career with the welfare department . . .” “Burgeoning career? TV people shouldn’t be allowed to use big words,” Lucas muttered. “So now what?” Daniel asked angrily. “How in the hell could you do this?” “I didn’t know I was,” Lucas said mildly. “I thought we were having a personal conversation.” “I told you that your dick was going to get you in trouble with that woman,” Daniel said. “What the hell am I going to tell Lester? He’s been out there in front of the cameras making his case and you’re talking to this puss behind his back. You cut his legs out from under him. He’ll be after your head.” “Tell him you’re suspending me. What’s bad? Two weeks? Then I’ll appeal to the civil-service board. Even if the board okays the suspension, it’ll be months from now. We should be able to put it off until this thing is settled, one way or another.” “Okay. That might do it.” Daniel nodded and then laughed unpleasantly, shaking his head. “Christ, I’m glad that wasn’t me getting grilled. You better get out of here before Lester arrives or we’ll be busting him for assault.”   At two o’clock in the morning the telephone rang. Lucas looked up from the drawing table where he was working on Everwhen, reached over, and picked it up. “Hello?” “Still mad?” Jennifer asked. “ You bitch. Daniel’s suspending me. I’m giving interviews to everybody except you guys, you can go suck—” “Nasty, nasty—” He slammed the receiver back on the hook. A moment later the phone rang again. He watched it like a cobra, then picked it up, unable to resist. “I’m coming over,” she said, and hung up. Lucas reached for it, to call her, to tell her not to come, but stopped with his hand on the receiver.   Jennifer wore a black leather jacket, jeans, black boots, and driving

I think about how the majority of her films feature women of a certain age, women who are often addressed as halmoni. I always assumed Inseon’s outgoing nature would have played a large part in generating the extraordinary intimacy of her interviews. That as the women paused in their remarks or trailed off into silence when their eyes fell on the camera, Inseon would have sat across from them, her face open and sincere, and tried her best to meet their gaze. It was this off-screen face of hers I pictured while watching her documentary on Việt Nam, specifically the scene where the local guide is translating Inseon’s questions to the woman who lives alone in a remote jungle village. She is asking if you have a story you want to tell her about that night. Above the somewhat stiffly translated subtitles, the woman looks past the camera. Her short white hair is tucked behind her ears, her face small and gaunt, and her eyes are unusually sharp. This person came here from Korea to ask you this. Finally, the woman speaks. All right. I’ll tell you. She stares steadily at the camera with remarkable focus, not once glancing at the interpreter. The gleam in her eyes pierced the lens and—I imagined—Inseon’s eyes, lancing directly into my own. This was the reply of someone who had waited a very long time for this moment. This brief consent, I realized, held the entire weight of her life.