How to find beauty in the mess we make
From Mimi Chakarova
VCspotlight is a bi-monthly interview series with the documentary filmmakers and video journalists who comprise our global filmmaking collective.
For over a decade, Mimi Chakarova documented the stories of young Eastern European women sold into sexual slavery, first as a photojournalist and then as a filmmaker. Her feature-length documentary The Price of Sex won the Human Rights Watch Nestor Almendros Award for courage in filmmaking and has received recognition for excellence in investigative reporting and coverage of trauma. Chakarova taught visual storytelling at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism for 14 years and, more recently, founded a production company. Her most recent film, Men: A Love Story, explores the meaning of masculinity and sexuality across the United States. She’s currently directing “Still I Rise,” a documentary series that celebrates those who overcome adversity.
Where did you grow up? Where do you live now?
I grew up in a small village in Bulgaria, close to the border with Macedonia and Greece. My mom and I immigrated to the United States when I was 13. Neither of us spoke any English. I went to school in Baltimore and our years there were a real struggle. It was not even like starting from zero, felt more like we were in the red, trying to make it to zero for the first couple of years.
I now live in Berkeley, California. I taught at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism for 14 years and that was the main reason I moved to Berkeley from San Francisco where I lived from age 17 on.
What was your first-ever job?
My first job was cleaning houses. I learned not to take lunch breaks. I remember cleaning the house of a lady who lived with two big cats. She never left the house while I was there. Every few hours, she would put on these white cotton gloves (the kind you see museum staff wear to install art) and run her fingers under the most peculiar places, like under the dining table or under individual stairs, places I never thought I needed to scrub clean as well. Then, because I didn’t speak English, she would get in my face to demonstrate the dust on the glove. The first day I cleaned her house, I took a 20-minute lunch break. I sat on the porch and ate the cheese and tomato sandwich my mom had packed for me. At the end of the day, the lady pulled out a calculator and subtracted those 20 minutes from my pay. So, that was the first and last time I brought lunch with me.
What was the first film or video that you worked on?
I worked as a photojournalist and didn’t get into video until 2008. I remember the exact moment when my still camera reached its limitation. A young woman I had photographed for four years was smoking a cigarette. She was recounting how she was sold for sex in Dubai and when she described what happened there, she forgot about the lit cigarette. She had drifted off to some other place. The ash kept getting closer and closer to her fingertips and at that moment, her voice, her expression, the burning cigarette… I thought, I can’t do her justice with my still camera. I told her and that was the very first video interview I shot. It was terrible, full of every imaginable mistake a beginner could make. But the power of the content was there. And we decided to open and close The Price of Sex with that first video interview. From that moment on, I wanted to get better. It took another ten years before I was happy with my skill level and stopped only seeing the mistakes. But I tell you, there were a lot of mistakes before I got to that point…
What are you working on now?
I’m working on an hour long silent film that will premiere in Berlin in April 2020. It’s a collaboration with a remarkable jazz pianist, Kris Davis, who will score the film live on stage with a few other talented and prolific musicians. I took it on because I had never done a project like this one. I had to come up with a concept that was still documentary in nature and I wanted it to be about things I care about, the issues of our time. The crazy part is there is no sound. Every movement, every gesture needs to inform the next. I can’t tell you how many nights I lay in bed thinking about how to solve certain sections, how to deepen the narrative and also, how to add comic relief. Because in all of the mess we make, there is also beauty. And if not beauty, some humor.
What’s your favorite question for an interview subject?
I made a film, “Men: A Love Story,” where I got to ask my favorite question to a lot of men from all walks of life. What is love? You might think the answers were cliché but that was far from the truth. They were deep and personal. It’s a film that really re-instated my faith in human beings. After nearly a decade in the sex trafficking vortex, I became so cynical and suspicious of the goodness of people, I needed to get back to that place of why we make work in the first place. If I can’t believe in the goodness of us, there is no point.
What’s a ritual or mantra that’s particularly important to you as a filmmaker?
Be kind first and put the camera down when it gets in the way of that.
What inspires you?
I love reading fiction because there is a level of truth that’s often too painful to convey in non-fiction. I love art and how it carries on despite limitations. A true artist must create. It’s a hell of a way to live if you don’t have the resources. And many people don’t. But they keep making art. They keep painting, composing, writing, dancing… I find that inspiring beyond belief.
In terms of music, growing up in Baltimore, I learned about soul music and to this day, it’s the music that speaks to me the most because that’s the America I got to witness. My first true teachers and cultural ambassadors were folks who were brought up on the streets of Baltimore and when they heard that my fresh off the boat self knew nothing about the Temptations, the Supremes, Sam Cooke, Donny Hathaway, Roberta Flack, they made it a mission to expose me to their music and more.
What’s one thing in your camera bag that you can’t live without?
I carry copies of my passports in my camera bag, especially when doing work abroad. It’s helped me in the past when dealing with bureaucracy — having dual citizenship has been pretty useful. I remember having my red Bulgarian passport (before BG joined the European Union) when trying to get a journalist visa in Havana. It’s something that I couldn’t have done with my American one. And there were other places too, like Iraq and the United Arab Emirates where having that second option was helpful.
Are there other resources or communities that VC members should know about?
We launched “Still I Rise,” a documentary film series about individuals who overcome adversity, in 2018 and since have expanded our grant program to offer more opportunities and exposure to filmmakers and visual artists working on inspiring projects. I was able to raise more funds for 2020 and look forward to commissioning and collaborating with folks whose work fits the theme of “Still I Rise.”
What are you curious to know about other members?
I guess the main question for me is to know how filmmakers continue to find the courage to do this tough and relentless work that often takes years to make and often goes unrecognized while underpaid. At the low points of my career, I ask myself that question. Am I crazy? Why haven’t I quit?
Why don’t we quit? That might be my main question. And making change can’t be the answer because change is so incremental, it often doesn’t even happen in several generations. There’s got to be more. Maybe we are a crazy bunch who can’t take NO for an answer. If you ask me what I feel like on most production days, I would have to say, like a dung beetle rolling up a big ball of shit up a hill and often having to try again and again.
