Mille Clarkes was born in Toronto and moved to Prince Edward Island with her father when she was 11 years old.
[1] Her father is Canadian artist and composer Gerard Luther Clarkes,[2] they have worked together on Melodies for Max (2013) and Land Feed the Farmer (2015) for the PEI Council of the Arts.
[4] After studying philosophy at King's College in Halifax, Nova Scotia,[5] she went on a road trip across Canada, the United States and Mexico, and documented her travels.
Her institutional work also includes sitting on the boards of The PEI Council of the Arts and the Women in Film and Television-Atlantic.
She has worked with the city of Charlottetown, Discover Charlottetown and the Art in the Open festival, Prince Edward Island Farm Center, Confederation Centre of the Arts, the Halifax Jazz Festival, the Neworld theatre, the Macphail Woods Ecological Forestry Project and others.
What led Mille Clarkes to filmmaking was "happenstance and serendipity"[1] While studying at King's College, she made a super-8 experimental film, and unveiled a passion for observing that had been present since she was a child.
Local is mitigated by an idea of the universal in a journey across Canada, through the US, and into Mexico, and includes rich and poor characters, young and old, prostitutes, street people, and priests.
"[11]Clarkes is an independent filmmaker and despite the constraints working with a small budget brings, she said: "There is a great communicative strength in attempting to convey something within the limitations you are given.