Is it pos­si­ble to make a movie while suf­fer­ing from depression?

I was checked into a men­tal hos­pi­tal at age 22. I saw what hap­pened to peo­ple who were giv­en hard­core phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals. They were real­ly crude. I’ve heard that now phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals are real­ly good and nice with no side-effects and you feel real­ly right. I didn’t have those when I was in men­tal hos­pi­tal. They give you a hand­ful of phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals and they are hard­core and they numb the whole of your being.

There was one girl who was raped at age 16 and had a ner­vous break­down because it was such a trau­mat­ic expe­ri­ence. She was brought into men­tal hos­pi­tal because of her break­down. She was giv­en these phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals day after day after day. When I saw her she was maybe one year old­er than me. She had been in the men­tal hos­pi­tal sev­en years at the time and she was prac­ti­cal­ly a veg­etable – mean­ing that she couldn’t put two words togeth­er. She would mum­ble one word over and over, what­ev­er word of the day was, and she would not hold her urine or faeces.

Every time she had to go she would just do it on the floor or in her dia­pers so she was not ful­ly a human being. I thought it was a pun­ish­ment for being raped. I was just so fright­ened that it could hap­pen to me, like if I keep hav­ing those ner­vous break­downs that I would be turned into this bare­ly human state with the help of phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals. I was just so fright­ened and when I got out of the men­tal hos­pi­tal I said, ​‘nev­er again – nev­er again I go back there – nev­er again’ and ​‘what do I do? How do I survive?’

Since I stud­ied phi­los­o­phy for five years, I had the tools to research my state and to research how to get bet­ter. Through the books and through research I was find­ing my way of liv­ing. One thing that broke me down was that I couldn’t find pur­pose and mean­ing in my life. With­out hav­ing a pur­pose out­side of your­self you can­not sur­vive five min­utes of depres­sion. For some peo­ple it’s their chil­dren, for some peo­ple it’s the uni­verse for some peo­ple it’s God.

I grew up in a Com­mu­nist coun­try so I didn’t have the lux­u­ry of reli­gion to give me a high­er pur­pose. I had to find it on my own and I found it in the books of Carl Gus­tav Jung. Carl Gus­tav Jung saved my life. Read­ing him and him telling me that life is ran­dom (or that was the hint) and you make sense of life by assign­ing mean­ing to lit­tle events. You walk on the streets, you find a lit­tle twig, and that means some­thing. You have to place that twig into the mean­ing of your day, of your life, because it has a meaning.

In Sovi­et Union where I grew up there were no psy­chother­a­pists, only psy­chi­a­trists pre­scrib­ing med­i­cine, so I didn’t go down that path. When I arrived here in the Unit­ed States in 1995, I didn’t have insur­ance. I was extra­or­di­nar­i­ly poor. For the first two years I was even ille­gal here so I didn’t have it. I want­ed to have ther­a­py. I would love to have ther­a­py but I couldn’t. Now, of course, I prob­a­bly could but I don’t have time to even think about it.

I have a ther­a­pist in my head. This imag­i­nary ther­a­pist is around a 79-year-old man and he’s sit­ting in a chair. He’s very slow and speaks very delib­er­ate­ly. I tell him my ques­tions. I say, ​‘Why is this hap­pen­ing?’ or ​‘I have a prob­lem with this.’ Some­times I get very angry and I say, ​‘Why am I so angry?’ I just keep telling him what made me angry and I’m ask­ing why I’m so angry at this? Before he can answer, when he’s tak­ing the breath to answer or ask me a ques­tion, some­how it hits me, I know exact­ly why and so he doesn’t have to say any­thing. I don’t think I ever heard him say any­thing. Just me talk­ing to him in my head brings me to the answer.

You become a film­mak­er, you become an artist, and then you dis­cov­er why you’re doing this stuff. You have to answer that, very clear­ly. Every­thing that I do is against my eco­nom­ic self-inter­est. I’m prac­ti­cal­ly destroy­ing my bank account because I’m mak­ing films. So why am I doing this? Why am I destroy­ing my health sit­ting at my table work­ing all these long hours? Why? The rea­son, I think, I made an answer for myself is that… So, there is this main­stream enter­tain­ment that repro­duces the same three ideas, the same three sto­ries, because that’s what we see from Hollywood.

Inde­pen­dent ani­ma­tion has been a lit­tle hijacked as well. Rocks in my Pock­ets is one person’s voice, one person’s view. It’s one person’s vision and it goes into the space of the diver­si­ty of thought. It sup­ports the diver­si­ty of thought. If you only con­sume main­stream enter­tain­ment you get fed cer­tain ideas but there is this oth­er space for diver­si­ty of thought and I think my films and thou­sands of oth­er people’s films sup­port that diver­si­ty of opinion.

I feel that as a species we need the diver­si­ty of thought because if you have only one way of look­ing at the world you are not accus­tomed to being con­tra­dict­ed. When you have con­tra­dic­tions in your life and there are dif­fer­ent ways of look­ing at things you are more capa­ble of man­ag­ing these con­tra­dic­to­ry thoughts in your head. And you are also able to find solu­tions to press­ing prob­lems. That’s my view. So, for me, I feel like I am work­ing towards cre­at­ing and sup­port­ing this diver­si­ty of thought.

On one hand I’m hap­py that peo­ple are get­ting diag­nosed with men­tal ill­ness because it puts a name on a cer­tain human con­di­tion and it helps you to under­stand your­self bet­ter. I like to have a name. When you say I’m bipo­lar it alerts me to my con­di­tion and I can say, ​’Ohh, I have these ups and now I’m on an up.’

On one hand the term ​‘bipo­lar’ makes me under­stand my con­di­tion. On the oth­er hand I feel like there’s no men­tal ill­ness. There isn’t. There’s none. There’s zero. Every­thing that we go through is a human con­di­tion. When you say, ​‘You are schiz­o­phrenic’ you’re putting a new iden­ti­ty on me: that I am a patient, that I am men­tal­ly ill, but I am not! I am just a human being who has slight­ly dif­fer­ent brain func­tion. And once some­one says, ​‘You are schiz­o­phrenic’ or ​‘You are bipo­lar’ you put a diag­no­sis on me and now that’s my iden­ti­ty. Now my iden­ti­ty sep­a­rates me from you.

I don’t know if we are get­ting over-diag­nosed. Now there are all these shades – like this kind of depres­sion, that kind of depres­sion – and it’s all very help­ful but at the same time once you iden­ti­fy as bipo­lar you can make all these excus­es. You can say, ​’I’m men­tal­ly ill!’ but you’re not! You’re just human. I don’t know. It’s just a com­pli­cat­ed thing, In some cul­tures, for exam­ple, peo­ple who were schiz­o­phren­ics and heard voic­es, they were seen as spir­i­tu­al gurus because they heard dead peo­ple in their ears. They had super­pow­ers and that was a good thing. Now in West­ern soci­ety hear­ing voic­es is a very bad thing, right.

It’s like you’re men­tal­ly ill, you get diag­nosed, you get shut in a men­tal hos­pi­tal. But what if there’s some­thing mag­i­cal about hear­ing voic­es? I’m not an expert. I’m just ques­tion­ing this. It’s a ques­tion. I’m strug­gling with this myself. How much do we need to be put in a box of ​‘bipo­lar’ you know? Does it real­ly help? I mean it helps to a cer­tain extent but how dif­fer­ent is that from just being human?

Expe­ri­enc­ing depres­sion – maybe it’s a nor­mal thing? Maybe it’s a nor­mal thing if you know how to han­dle it but now you go to a psy­chol­o­gist and you say, ​‘I have this inner pain. My hus­band died and I’m in this pain,’ instead of deal­ing with the pain he pre­scribes you med­i­cine and dulls the pain and he’s done with his work. I don’t know. I don’t have an answer. It’s all just questions.

I made a lot of films about sex and when you present films about sex in front of thou­sands of peo­ple and then you make a film about your per­son­al depres­sion, depres­sion com­pared to sex, it’s not as bad. Sex is a very pow­er­ful sub­ject. When I put out a film about sex I was fright­ened what oth­er peo­ple would think about me. Peo­ple did think weird thoughts about me. Then I made anoth­er film about sex. I just keep mak­ing them. But the thing is I am fright­ened. When peo­ple say, ​’Oh, it looks like you don’t care what peo­ple think about you,’ I’m like, ​‘No, it’s not true. I care deeply what peo­ple think about me, and I’m fright­ened.’ I live in con­stant fear about what peo­ple think of me. I don’t know what urges me to just to put it out.

When I was a young child I had to go three kilo­me­tres to school by foot. I had to go through a ceme­tery, through a park, through aban­doned places. That was a three kilo­me­tre walk at 7 in the morn­ing in the dark and then at night, in the evening and there were all these stray dogs. My dad said, ​‘When you meet a stray dog, don’t show him your fear. When you see a stray dog just walk as you’re walk­ing nor­mal­ly. Don’t change your path. Don’t even look at the dog. Don’t acknowl­edge the dog and nothing’s going to hap­pen to you.’

So when I was walk­ing I was, what, 8‑years-old. I walk through this park and then this stray dog shows up. He sees me and he’s near­ly big­ger than me. He can do any­thing to me. He comes and stands right in front of my path where I have to go and he looks at me, chal­leng­ing me. My heart starts to pound and I’m full of fright but I remem­ber my dad’s advice and I walk right to where I was going to walk: my path. I was com­ing clos­er to the dog and at the last moment, the dog stepped aside. I didn’t even acknowl­edge the dog and just walked through. This is how I live. I am afraid of the judg­ment but there is some­thing I have to do as an artist and I just keep doing it even if I’m so frightened.

When you have an artis­tic project, there’s no way you that you can not get out of bed. For exam­ple, I worked on Rocks in my Pock­ets for four years – now I should say five years because all of this dis­tri­b­u­tion and pro­mo­tion is part of the project. Nobody asked me to make it. There’s no com­pa­ny, no cor­po­ra­tion that came knock­ing on my door say­ing, ​‘We’ll give you $10,000. Make this film.’ No. I start­ed it myself and it means that if I don’t sit down at the table and work and cre­ate a cou­ple of draw­ings a day, noth­ing will hap­pen. Noth­ing will hap­pen. The project will not be made. Let’s say you are a bank clerk and are hired by the bank. If you can’t get out of bed in the morn­ing and you don’t go to work, even­tu­al­ly you will be replaced because the work that you do is not that unique.

It is not that irre­place­able. The work I do… If I don’t do it then nobody else can do it. That is a huge moti­va­tion to over­come my pain and get out of bed. Also, I have to say that when I was in my twen­ties, very often I tried that strat­e­gy of, ​‘Because it’s so painful I can’t move, let me just sleep it off.’ Then I found out that you can­not sleep it off. It just gets worse if you indulge it. If you fol­low that feel­ing of, ​‘Oh, I’m going to rest up. It’s going to get bet­ter.’ No, it doesn’t. I dis­cov­ered that it doesn’t work so I know that I can­not not get out of bed so I have to get out of bed.

In a nor­mal day I can cre­ate 30 to 50 draw­ings. When I’m depressed I can cre­ate two draw­ings or three draw­ings and they are shit. They look like shit. They feel like shit. They are hor­ri­ble. Then I go on an upswing to the man­ic phase. When I’m in a man­ic phase I can cre­ate 80 to 90 draw­ings a day and they seem per­fect and genius. I’m the best thing! Then when I’m going down from the man­ic phase I look at them again and I’m like, ​‘God! They’re hor­ri­ble’ but then the draw­ings that I did when I was depressed are not so bad. It’s inter­est­ing for me to have these man­ic phas­es and depres­sive phases.

I feel like I have this jour­ney and rela­tion­ship with real­i­ty that peo­ple that just go through depres­sion – or they don’t have depres­sion or man­ic phas­es – that they don’t quite have. I actu­al­ly think that I’m able to see real­i­ty in these extremes, like extreme­ly neg­a­tive – life stripped down from all the mean­ing, from all excite­ment, from all the colours and I’m able to see it ful­ly charged, full of mean­ing, pur­pose and colours, so vivid and then I can see things the way they are. I have three states of deal­ing with real­i­ty, three states of mind. I think it’s quite amaz­ing and inter­est­ing to have these per­spec­tives where some peo­ple only expe­ri­ence one way of look­ing at the world.

I have been with my boyfriend since 2000 and it’s prob­a­bly the best thing that ever hap­pened to me. I was per­fect­ly capa­ble at the age when I met him to make the right choic­es and also had learned enough to be able to sus­tain the rela­tion­ship. You know rela­tion­ships are give and take. I also think that he is a per­fect per­son for me. Unlike all these oth­er rela­tion­ships that I had that were very demand­ing. Some men real­ly didn’t like me doing my own thing, you know, like being an artist. They kind of felt pos­ses­sive and jealous.

There was my first mar­riage. He was an alco­holic. That was a dif­fi­cult rela­tion­ship. My sec­ond mar­riage was based on a lie. He lied about who he was so I made these bad choic­es and also I was inca­pable of sus­tain­ing my own emo­tions about rela­tion­ships. When I met my boyfriend I not only met he right per­son but, as a per­son, I was ready for a good rela­tion­ship. I think that rela­tion­ships are extra­or­di­nar­i­ly impor­tant for our men­tal bal­ance. First, because it’s a shared life.

When you are just cook­ing in your own juice you can only have so much flavour. And then the oth­er per­son comes into your life and sud­den­ly you see the world from the oth­er person’s per­spec­tive. Very often you say, ​‘I have this weird thought’ and you have anoth­er adjust­ed per­son that under­stands you from day to day – like you see your friends on, I don’t know, a week­ly basis but a per­son who you share tooth­paste with, a per­son who you share the day with and the dai­ly con­ver­sa­tion, they get to know parts that oth­er peo­ple will nev­er know. It’s very, very impor­tant. They are able to offer per­spec­tive on your life but they also bring this oth­er life in your life. I think it’s just amaz­ing to have rela­tion­ships. We humans need rela­tion­ships. We can­not be alone.