Bulgarian documentarian Mimi Chakarova — one to watch
Mimi Chakarova, a Bulgarian-American documentarian, has attempted to redefine ‘taboo’ over the years. Starting out as a documentary photographer, she gradually moved to film; and founded the production house A Moment in Times. Chakarova has illuminated various social concerns — corruption, sex trade, war. When first hearing her on The Kitchen Sisters Present podcast, her serene voice comforted me while she spoke of jarring things.
Chakarova figured out her purpose at an early age — to dedicate her time and energy on work that inspires others, and encouraging youngsters to carry it on. She admits playing an active role in the arts has “been a difficult journey because the ideology of social change rarely pays the bills but I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
BAREFOOT IN BULGARIA
Her grandmother in Bulgaria is fundamental in shaping this purpose, shaping her childhood. In many ways, how her grandmother chose to remain unmarried after becoming a widow at a young age, presented Chakarova with a anti-traditional concept of womanhood. “My grandmother wanted to protect her daughters from any external harm. She remained alone, put them both through school even though that meant sending my mom away to another city and only seeing her on holidays. [She] wanted a different future for her girls,” and ultimately a different future for her granddaughters.
“I named my daughter after my grandmother as a reminder of her strength.”
Having come from deep Bulgarian roots, Chakarova keeps returning to The Balkans for work. Transnationalism is usually a characteristic sought for in different professions. For a photographer and documentarian, creating work that crosses borders may mean more than merely working outside your country. “You can’t (and shouldn’t) escape your roots,” says Chakarova. She accepts the injustices that happened in her home country as relevant as those elsewhere, and wants to cover both. Yet, she keeps returning to Bulgaria. Why?
“I understood the culture but also because I had the fortunate predicament to leave. Had I been a journalist living with my family in the Balkans, doing the same type of work, I would have feared for my life and their safety. So many journalists from Bulgaria (and other countries) who expose corruption and human rights abuses are executed, tortured, disposed of for attempting to tell the truth and do their job.” Her geographical access provides tools to study and represent certain realities of the Balkans; in ways locals relate. But these representations end up as more than just foreign language for audiences at large, audiences internationally, as seen across her work.
TRANSLATOR OF REALITIES
These injustices Chakarova speaks of, as a journalist is one thing to write about them, but filming and photographing defines unique reactions. ‘To see’ triggers immediate emotion, bringing us as close to something that is to us intangible — somebody else’s experiences. “I thought it was so incredible to see a person’s condition through the viewfinder and in a fraction of a second record that very moment in time.”
There must be an undertone of empathy across documenting people’s fragile lives. Empathy need not have a moral selfishness to it — Chakarova’s works focuses on how that empathy translates the world’s chaos into something accessible. This process she defines as a “connection to the people” documented. “In order to my work, people have to trust me. That’s the ultimate and most sacred connection. But also the constant reminder that I am working with them and for them. And no one else.”
In Price of Sex (trailer below), a documentary about sex trafficking in the Balkans, Chakarova admits empathy played a big role. She says she is a woman telling women’s stories — “I know exactly how it feels to be a woman and navigate a world full of obstacles.” Although this does not mean she cannot tell men’s stories. In fact, she challenged herself and her team to do exactly that when they produced Men: A Love Story.
Producing imagery through photo or film, the translation that occurs via Chakarova is by definition a representation of someone’s reality. A documentarian attempts to frame that representation as close to the ‘truth’ as possible, but to surpass that distinction fully would require methods yet unknown to us. Does the artist acknowledge this struggle?
“Everything I make represents a moment in time.” Say she films a couple in love that momentarily creates a beautiful story. After some years, that same couple may no longer exist. “Just because you film someone who is suffering and feeling on the verge of taking his or her own life does not mean that it defines who this person is or will be. It’s the responsibility of the filmmaker to make that clear and also leave room for change and hope.”
Although photography is what Chakarova started with which cultivated her sense of empathy as a tool, she gradually transitioned to film. She reached a limitation with photography:
“It happened one day when I was photographing a young woman who had been trafficked to Dubai. She was smoking a cigarette as she talked about what happened to her. She was so deep in the memory of her horrific past, she didn’t realize how the ash of the cigarette was about to burn her fingertip. I don’t know how to make a photograph that expressed the trauma I saw in front of me. But I knew if I were to attempt the moving image, if I were to record what she was saying and most importantly, how she was saying it, her sighs, her body language, we could show more people the reality of trafficking and how it breaks the human spirit. It took me a long time to convince Vika to go on camera but in 2008, I transitioned from photography to film largely because of her.”
In each project, Chakarova attempts to bridge worlds between the subject and the viewer. None of them are each other, and nor can they ever be. It trickles down to successfully creating a space where the latter can experience genuine (or close to-) empathy for the former.
“There are different realities. There are the realities of war. Misery. Opulence. Exclusivity. It’s hard for people to imagine walking in someone else’s shoes. It’s my job to bridge these worlds, to the best of my ability. That’s all I am — a messenger. Or a translator of realities.”
COLLECTIVE STRUGGLE
The films and photographs consciously or not take a step further and extend beyond individual bridging of subject and viewer. They end up reflecting very real social and political struggles that resonate within a culture or across cultural confrontations. The abuse, the suffering, subjugation, emancipation, is revealed shot by shot — creating a condensed observable product that becomes an official part of collective history of a suffering.
Chakarova has also travelled and documented Kashmir, a presently morally dubious and bloody piece of land. “Kashmir is a place that never leaves you. It’s so strikingly beautiful and at the same time, it’s a brutal place for innocent people who’ve been trapped in the conflict for generations now.” She felt immeasurable fear, a fear that is all the time. Where you cannot understand why civilians stop to matter, why they are so disposable. She describes “bomb blasts, soldiers everywhere, young men accused of being militants, hospitals filled with bats and screams of people in excruciating pain…”
“It’s honoring struggle and perseverance by taking a pause and making it part of our collective history.”
Special thanks to Mimi Chakarova.
