I AM MAKING A DOCUMENTARY
Lemme tell you about it!
I am making a documentary. I have never shot or filmed anything before. Making a film has been a dream of mine but I thought it was silly and could wait for another lifetime. But the opportunity to make a documentary has risen.
I am a sex worker who has been in recovery for almost 5 years. I meet each week online with a group of people who also share this unique intersection of identities. One of the women who I have become friends with in this group has 20 plus years of sobriety and has been doing sex work on and off her entire life. Though I had previous thoughts of wanting to create content for and by sex workers, I didn’t know what it would look like. I rarely articulated this dream to others but when my friend admitted that she too wanted to make a documentary- I told her to count me in.
A few nights later I was walking back to my apartment in the cold and empty streets, my friend called me. She called me and told me her vision of creating a documentary centered around sex workers in recovery.
“I think it’s only right if we make a documentary about sex workers in recovery. It is two areas that we have lived experiences in and it would feel exploitative to make content about things we haven't experienced,” she said. I couldn’t agree more.
She then went on to explain how she envisioned the structure of the film. My heart jumped, it sounded perfect. And ever since then I have been working daily to make this vision come alive.
Though I worked as a production assistant for over a year and my collaborator went to film school, we have never created films ourselves. In my mind, I reserved that privilege for the pros. But when you think about all documentaries, don't they usually just start with a person asking a question and seeking answers? That’s what we are doing.
We are not working through a production company at the moment because I feel this content is so sensitive and can so easily be exploited in the wrong hands. We are not even sure if we are making a feature. We are crowdfunding the money as well as putting in our own. I am doing some sessions now just for the sake of funding our film. It’s all been very challenging to navigate something so overwhelming and gate kept but this film has given me a purpose again. Most importantly, I believe in this film. Part of the film’s mission is to represent the varied experiences of people who do sex work. My collaborator and I feel that the intersection of recovery and sex work have never been represented in film though both things are very intertwined. All in all, his film is going to fuck up vapid and straight up destructive narratives that people have about sex workers.
I got into sex work in sobriety. And I know many others have done the same. This is surprising to most people when they hear this because most people view sex work in terms of movies/tv shows they have watched. We know the narrative. Representation of sex work is usually characterized by addiction, rape, and coercion; pretty much, nothing short of torment and misery. We see this in popular films like Requiem for a Dream where a girl must sell her body for drugs because she is caught up in her addiction. She is miserable, forced into violent situations and is forever shattered by this betrayal of innocence and her body. This is not to say this does not happen, it does. But it is a great injustice to have that same narrative told and retold by people who are not even sex workers! Because of the beauty and the distinct experiences and of the people who have volunteered to be in this documentary, the film seamlessly portrays the nuances of what sex work can look like and who does it.
Bullet points for those in a time crunch!
What our documentary plans to do:
Humanize sex workers
Represent sex workers who are in recovery from drugs/alc
Validate that sex work can be enjoyable and be a means of freedom
Center trans-voices
Show a variety of sex workers- from online work escorting to mainstream porn
Establish that content about swers are best told by swers themselves
There are many other bullet points that I am probably forgetting. By no means does this film strive to be perfect. This is because it is one film. Hopefully, this project will encourage other sex workers to document their own lives if they feel safe and are compelled enough to do it. Sex worker history is sadly lost everyday since most of it is not written down. The history of this profession is made mostly in the shadows. I don’t want to lose another story, another history because what we do makes people uncomfortable.
I am lucky enough to be surrounded by friends who have a variety of experiences and backgrounds. I get advice everywhere I go. I am learning about cameras, lenses and shooting in low light and recording audio. It feels like I’ve gone back to school. But we are going to make this documentary. I finally feel a sense of purpose again. Follow me on the journey. And donate when that Kickstarter link drops!!
( i have my cashapp in the graphic bc if i haven’t mentioned i’m not getting paid to do any of this so if you feel compelled to fund me personally, cash app is great.)