Ironically, upon seeing Kirsten I was already studying her, her movements, her outfit and the way she spoke but that was her plan all along. She wanted people to pay attention to her, to study her, to critique her, and to ask her questions. I'm not sure if that's why she irritated me but in a way, I was both intrigued and annoyed by her presence. The way she forced the entire lecture room to turn their bodies for her attention and the way she invaded the spaces she sat or stood in. In a lot of ways, that's what makes her a great filmmaker because her point is that she was becoming the camera. She was studying angles and judging the subject of her work with critical eyes but also aware of the way she was being perceived and how it might be interpreted differently from what she expects. She is one of those people that you would describe as an open vessel, aware of her large presence and interested in how it is perceived in different audiences.
As much as she is someone who likes to be inquisitory, I felt like the questions didn't go anywhere. I didn't truly grasp her mission for filmmaking and why she got into it. I didn't hear anything about her personal struggles of getting into filmmaking as an indie filmmaker. I felt the lecture as distracting because I wanted her insight into what she has learned from filmmaking related to our lecture. But instead, it felt like more of a philosophy or sociology course on the ways human work which is an interesting topic but didn't feel right for our class. I understood her metaphors for the camera but I just wish she was more relatable to me. I didn't see myself in her work or anything she was saying, I felt left out of the conversation even though I was listening to everything she was saying. She is a great and open speaker and I enjoyed "looking into each other's eyes" bit because it made me feel closer to my classmate Jeremy even though we've been sitting next to each other the entire semester. In those two minutes, we became friends cause we bonded over a common experience. So at least I walked away from the lecture with a new friend.
