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Opening her masterclass at doc film festival Visions du Réel in Switzerland, cinematographer and filmmaker Kirsten Johnson – an Emmy and Sundance award winner for “Dick Johnson Is Dead” – started by naming each and every member of the technical crew on set.

“What I often find upsetting with cinema is that we forget to acknowledge all the people it takes to make these moments together. I learnt that through being a cameraperson, and I’m interested in understanding why we want to reduce it to just one person, because there’s something beautiful about the fact that all of these humans, collectively, help us be here today,” she said, employing her favorite word to describe her work, “Cameraperson,” which is also the title of second feature film.

Over three decades, Johnson has worked on some 60 films as a cinematographer, for the likes of Michael Moore and Laura Poitras, made a couple...

Close-Up is a feature that spotlights films now playing on Mubi. Alfred Hitchcock's The Trouble with Harry (1955) is showing from September 16 – October 16, 2018 in many countries around the world as part of the series Alfred Hitchcock: A Ticking Bomb.The illustrated opening credits of The Trouble with Harry, featuring cartoonish countryside drawings designed by Saul Steinberg, conclude on an amusingly lifeless body, a crudely sketched frame lying horizontal and rigid and looking quite at peace. When the film proper begins, shots of vibrant fall hues drench rolling Vermont hills in shades of similarly pastoral tranquility. In spots, the multicolored leaves have fallen indiscriminately to the ground. In one spot, there is the more conspicuous corpse of ill-fated Harry Worp (Philip Truex). In what might be the most overtly humorous camera angle of his career, director Alfred Hitchcock positions the image at ground level, leaving Harry’s feet thrust forward in the frame,...