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.
Director’s Bio
Jennifer Fox is an internationally acclaimed, award-winning director, producer, camerawoman, and educator who has been involved in countless documentaries over the last twenty-five years. Her first film, Beirut: The Last Home Movie, was broadcast in twenty countries and won seven international awards, including Best Documentary Film and Best Cinematography at the 1988 Sundance Film Festival and The Grand Prix at the1988 Cinema Du Reel Festival, in Paris. She directed the groundbreaking ten-hour PBS/BBC/ARTE television series, An American Love Story, which received a Gracie Award for Best Television Series and was named “One of the Top Ten Television Series of 1999” by the New York Times and five other major American papers. Fox has executive produced many films including the award-winners: Love & Diane, On the Ropes, Double Exposure, Project Ten: Real Stories from a Free South Africa, Cowboys, Lawyers and Indians, and the soon to be released, Absolutely Safe? She has consulted on numerous documentaries, including Southern Comfort and Stone Reader. Fox is one of the subjects of two documentaries on filmmaking, The Heck with Hollywood! by Doug Blcok, and by Peter Wintonic, Cinema Verite, Defining the Moment.
Excerpts from Flying: Confessions of a Free Woman
EPISODE 1: Jennifer, NYC (2:14)
The narrator and main character of this epic film, Jennifer is a modern woman who never wanted to be limited by her femaleness, but now finds herself in a crisis over who she is as a woman and why she feels invisible. While juggling her filmmaking career and multi-partner love life, she sets out on a journey and passes her camera with other women to understand what it means to be a woman today.
EPISODE 2: Theresa, Cape Town, South Africa (1:47)
Recently divorced, Theresa finds herself looking for love in all the wrong places. Intimacy is an uphill battle for Theresa, whose childhood sexual abuse left her distrustful of men. Now, she and Jennifer speak candidly about having had abortions and the impact it had on their lives.
EPISODE 3: Paromita, Calcutta, India (2:14)
Paromita is a single woman, civil rights lawyer, the director of a rural grassroots organization, and a vital part of her local community. While Jennifer is in India to visit her, Paromita explains to Jennifer how she came to reject the idea of marriage for her life.
EPISODE 4: Socheata, Phnom Penh, Cambodia (2:03)
During Jennifer’s journey to Cambodia, one of her first stops is the Womyn’s Agenda for Change, a grassroots organization that works to empower Cambodian women in the sex and factory industry. Here Jennifer learns about sexual norms in Cambodia.
EPISODE: 5: Rural women outside Islamabad, Pakistan (3:00)
Jennifer travels to rural Pakistan to meet with women who are participating in a grassroots meeting to try and change the difficult position of women in their community.
EPISODE: 6: Jennifer, NYC (2:48)
After several miscarriages and a fertility wake-up call from her gynecologist, Jennifer and her Swiss boyfriend, Patrick, decide to try having a child through in vitro fertilization (IVF). Because of her age, her time is running out and Jennifer begins the process alone in NYC while Patrick, still in Switzerland, plans to arrive for the final procedure.
Click here to read an interview with Jennifer Fox, Director of Flying: Confessions of a Free Woman.