DivineCaroline’s Sneak Peek at Flying: Confessions of a Free Woman
DivineCaroline will present this exclusive sneak peek at Jennifer Fox’s amazing six-hour documentary, Flying: Confessions of a Free Woman. This opus will have its U.S. Theatrical Premiere at New York’s legendary Film Forum beginning July 4, 2007. We recommend seeing the whole series in the theater where possible as its a cinematic experience to be shared. Click here to find showings in a city near you.
Flying: Confessions of a Free Woman
2007, 360 minutes
Directed by Jennifer Fox
“What does the modern woman want? Where does she fit in today’s world?” Never before in our collective human history have so many women had such autonomy to construct a life of their own creation. Yet, the terrain is still rocky and “choice” does not necessarily bring happiness, let alone freedom. Meanwhile, old models of femaleness still haunt women everywhere.
In this six-hour tour de force, Flying: Confessions of a Free Woman, master storyteller Jennifer Fox lays bare her own turbulent life to penetrate what it means to be a free woman today. As her drama of work and relationships unfolds over four years, our protagonist travels to over seventeen countries to understand how diverse women define their lives when there is no map. Employing an ingenious new camera technique, called “passing the camera,” Fox creates a documentary language that mirrors the special way women communicate. Over intimate conversations around kitchen tables from South Africa to Russia, India, and Pakistan, she initiates a groundbreaking dialogue among women, illuminating universal concerns across race, class, and nationality. Part delectable soap opera, sociopolitical inquiry, and narrative experiments, Flying sweeps us up into an addictive international adventure chronicled with sincerity, innovation, and elegance.”—Caroline Libresco, Sundance Film Festival.
Director’s Statement
I am a very, very slow filmmaker. For me, ideas gestate for years—and only when the “beast” won’t go away, when it won’t leave me alone, am I sure that I should invest my life and make the damn thing. So, the ideas for Flying rolled around my head for many years and they just wouldn’t go away. First, in my mid-thirties, I began to notice that my conversations with women friends were somehow holding my life together. This was contrary to what I was taught growing up, which was that men would be the center of my life. Instead, I noticed that the men came and went, but my girlfriends remained constant. I began to think about why these female friendships were so important and why the way we spoke to each other was so powerful.
Being a filmmaker, I began to toy with the idea about making a film about women’s conversations, but for a long time, I couldn’t find a direction to go in that had enough story to it. Later, I was working in South Africa, and I met these two women, Theresa and Khosi, who were from totally different backgrounds than I. Within the space of minutes, we fell into the most intimate conversation about sex and love and life—like I had with my girlfriends of twenty years—and they were saying exactly the same things my girlfriends were saying. So I began to wonder: was there a red thread through all female life beyond class and culture?
Now, for me, this was a radical thought, because up until that moment, I was so sure that my life was unique, that my issues were particular to me—and certainly they had nothing to do with being a woman. You have to understand that at that point in my life, I was not a feminist in any way. I had not studied feminist theory or anything—I was a college drop out. In fact, when I grew up, I was told that feminists were “ball busters,” so I wanted nothing to do with those people. But here I was entering my forties without the typical milestones to reflect upon—no partner, no kids, multiple boyfriends, and several abortions. And I felt suddenly that I was in the midst of a crisis of reflection. I felt like I was invisible because my life didn’t have the traditional female touchstones. That’s when I realized I had to make a film about what it mean to be a woman today in order to figure out, for myself, who I really was. Because in fact, I was part of this species—the female species—that I had never really identified with at all.
