Kirsten Johnson’s radical documentary Dick Johnson Is Dead
blurs and subverts the line between fiction and non-fiction filmmaking. Throughout the film, Johnson uses the magic of cinema to repeatedly “kill” her octogenarian father, Dick, while documenting his losing battle with dementia. We see Dick tumble down the stairs, get struck by a falling air conditioner, be impaled by nails, and more all culminating in a staged funeral and a final sequence that encapsulates the movie’s prankish yet warm-hearted spirit. Here, film editor Nels Bangerter, who also collaborated with Johnson on her 2016 film Cameraperson
, explains how they perfected Dick Johnson