Following Charlie’s death in 1977, his daughter Victoria Chaplin discovered a letter addressed to her father which he had kept locked away in his bedside table for years. Michael Chaplin muses, “…my father received thousands of letters from all over the world, why would he keep that one unless it meant something to him?… And why was it a secret?”
The Romany author of the letter recounts the night Charlie Chaplin was born: not in London as widely believed but in a gypsy camp in the English Midlands, “…you don’t know where you were born or in fact who you really are…” taunts Jack Hill.
To more profoundly understand Charlie we must understand what it meant to be gypsy when he was born in 1889: life was arduous and often tragic. But the startling reality is that gypsies have been persecuted across Europe for centuries and continue to be victimized even today.
In 2012 Carmen directed a visual poem on the theme of time for luxury Swiss watch brand Jaeger-LeCoultre. A Time for Everything was selected for the acclaimed SHOOT New Directors Showcase at the Directors Guild of America Theatre in New York and is hosted online by Vogue; the film screened at the Saatchi Gallery in London and at Lincoln Centre in New York.
In 2014 Carmen wrote and directed a short science-fiction comedy for French car manufacturer Renault: The Innovators screened at Soho House in West Hollywood, Lincoln Center in New York, the Academy Awards qualifying festival Hollyshorts in Los Angeles, and enjoyed a successful festival run through 2015/16.
In 2016 Carmen completed narrative short drama Tryst in Paname starring Dolores Chaplin, Bambou Gainsbourg, and Stany Coppet. The film — showcased worldwide by UniFrance — began its festival run at Chelsea Film Festival in New York and screened at international film festivals through 2016/17 including Manchester International Film Festival and Shorts on Tap in London.
Carmen has two feature film projects in development at her production company Kwanon Films in London. She wrote the feature film screenplay Photocall — described by New York’s A24 Films as “extremely emotional and gripping” — and is also attached to direct the movie; Carmen is currently packaging the film with producing partner Ashim Bhalla.
In 2019 at the San Sebastián Film Festival, Spanish film production companies Wave of Humanity, Atlantika Films, and Kanaki Films announced that Carmen Chaplin is to direct feature documentary on her cinema legend grandfather Charlie Chaplin, a Man of the World.
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