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Mimi Chakarova's Documentary "The Price of Sex" At USC

Evie Liu |
October 2, 2012 | 10:54 a.m. PDT

Staff Reporter

Mimi Chakarova (reelingthereal.com)
Mimi Chakarova (reelingthereal.com)

Photojournalist and filmmaker Mimi Chakarova spoke at the University of Southern California last week after the screening of her film "The Price of Sex," a feature-length documentary about sex trafficking and abuse in rural parts of many countries.

Chakarova, who grew up in Bulgaria and emigrated to the United States in 1990, has a deep blood connection and sympathy for women from Eastern European countries like herself. This motivated her to start a seven-year investigative journey from Eastern Europe through the Middle East and on to Western Europe to expose the underground sex trafficking market that has been silenced for a long time.

Taking a huge risk and even posing as a prostitute, Chakarova gained extraordinary access to some precious first-hand material, including undisguised trafficked women talking in first-person accounts on film, as well as interviews with traffickers and clients.

In her documentary, Chakarova questions the effectiveness of capitalism by attempting to demonstrating that poverty and corruption resulted from this system.

When the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, people in Eastern Europe finally had a chance to taste capitalism. However, according to Chakarova, many in rural villages lacked the skills and education to survive. Girls, as a result, became “a commodity to be sold, exploited and discarded."

They were promised work abroad and instead were sold to pimps to work in brothels and sex clubs. Even though all the girls know that there is a risk to being sold as sex slaves, they still cannot resist the offer because they are so poor and almost desperate.

“Communism does not work, we all know that. But does this capitalism work? That’s my question, too. Is there something in between that we should be aspiring to deal with as human beings in our societies?” asked Chakarova.

When asked about the possible solution to this situation, Chakarova replied that the solution is not easy, but multilayered. On one hand, poverty pushes people to leave their hometown for survival. That makes supply. On the other hand, the corrupted judicial system does not hold those who commit crimes. That allows demand. “What’s worse is a vicious circle of stigma, shame and silence that a lot of women still continue to live with,” said Chakarova. According to her, the stigma is especially huge in regions like Eastern Europe: “Once you were sold into prostitution, you are prostitutes for the rest of time, it does not matter if somebody forced you or not. That’s like a stamp on you for the rest of time until you die.”

That is what she wants to change through her documentary. Often, when a woman is trafficked or raped, her face is not shown. But Chakarova wants to show their faces through her film, because they need to know that there is no shame in them.

“The only people who are anonymous in this film are the two cops and the pimp who I interviewed. Everyone else’s face is shown and I am really proud of that, because that is the targeting of stigma.”

Chakarova believes that the job as a journalist is to plant a seed of consciousness and get people think a little bit differently.

“Whether the seed is going to grow up is not for me to control,” said Chakarova. “You start by gradually changing perceptions. That’s a very gradual change, which might not happen in a lifetime. But it does not mean we stop trying.”

Chakarova’s documentary caps years of painstaking, on-the-ground reporting that aired on Frontline (PBS) and 60 Minutes (CBS) and earned her an Emmy nomination, Magnum photo agency’s Inge Morath Award, and a Webby for Internet excellence.

For further information about the film, visit priceofsex.org.

 

Reach Staff Reporter Evie Liu here.



 

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