Click here to learn more about Flying: Confessions of a Free Woman and to view clips of the movie.
Q: Tell me about why you created the technique of “passing the camera.”
A: The film really grew out of me noticing that I was having these incredibly special conversations with my girlfriends and they seemed to be different from any other conversations I’ve had in my life. They went on for hours; they were circular in nature. We hashed and rehashed the same issues over and over again. They were not goal oriented. At the end of the conversation, or the meal, or the coffee, I always walk away feeling better.
So, as a filmmaker, my goal was always to try to figure out how to capture some part of real life on film. Often when we bring out the camera, it destroys the event—or the real kind of presence, or life, in the event, because people start to act. I’m very, very interested in capturing the real moments of intimacy. So I felt if I brought a camera person into the room, it would destroy the kind of incredibly charged intimacy between me and my girlfriends. Even if I put the camera in a third position, like on a tripod, I felt like we would begin to become very self-conscious … I thought about how the conversations are circular—maybe if we used the camera in a circular way and literally passed it between us, so that I’m not the filmmaker, they’re not the subject … so we both have an equal power in the scene, then maybe we would be able to really capture what happens between women … I began to experiment and it worked well. In fact, it heightened the conversation because people get really excited. “Give me that camera!” ... It’s like a modern-day talking stick …
Q. How did you film on the plane?
A. Sometimes one person would hold the camera. A lot of times, it looks like there’s a camera person, but I’m actually holding it at arm’s length …
I made some rules and one was that the camera must be passed. Everyone in the scene must agree to be filmed. No one could just observe the filming … I wouldn’t use a tripod; if you see a static shot, it means the camera has been placed on a table, on a chair, in the kitchen, or the bathroom. The reason for that is I wanted to speed the process up, so that one wouldn’t be too thoughtful about it, make it really light and easy. Don’t make the camera important; diminish the importance of the camera … The camera is just a part of your life …
Q. How did you stay honest with yourself?
A. It is the big challenge, not to be self-conscious. I’m very aware as a viewer you can immediately see when someone is acting or when they’re uncomfortable … my whole effort was to work with the camera in a way that it just became a part of my daily life … I didn’t make a big thing of it and also, I decided I’d shoot hundreds and hundreds of hours, knowing that most of it I’d never use. So, in that way, I made it lighter. “I can shoot hundreds of hours, it can be crap!” … again, diminishing the importance of the camera and the footage so you relax … So when we edited, we really looked for the most authentic moments.
Q. Did you ever grow weary of filming over the four years?
A. Shooting takes a lot of energy, but it makes you feel more alive … you become awake and aware when you take the camera out. That awakeness is really exciting. The littlest thing becomes a piece of art … It brings a lot to your life. Now I’ve gone back to sleep … I’ve put the camera away, but I’m sleeping again. Of course, it’s comfortable, but it’s not as fun. It was a lot of fun shooting all the time.
Q. Does Buddhism inform your sensibility as a filmmaker?
A. For me, Buddhism has had a deep effect. Filmmaking is a practice, not a goal. It’s something I get up and do every day. It’s not something I feel I’ll ever achieve. I take it like a meditation practice.
Q. A lot of stories seem to be private, but ultimately you find that women’s stories are universal across race, class, and culture. Did that surprise you?
A. For me the sole premise of the film was the question, “Is there a universal thread? Does my life have a connection to other women?” and that was the thesis to be answered. But the thesis came from my observing … I remember I had a conversation with Alosha and Theresa [from Episode 1 in South Africa, whom she worked with] …We’d only known each other twenty-four hours, but during a break, the three of us started talking about sexuality … it was a really profound conversation. They came from different classes, different cultures, and ethnic backgrounds, yet we were all saying the same things: about men, sexuality, the struggle for pleasure, and I was like “Wow, it cross cuts everything!” Here I am this white middle class woman and here’s this black woman from a township and we were saying the same things.
Not only did I want to do a film about how women speak, but I think there’s a universal thread … in a sense my life depended on that journey because I had cut off from relating from a female identity. So for me the journey to see if I related to being a woman in a larger way was really important to who I am ...
I come from the belief anyway that the personal is political. Within every personal story is a political story. So for me turning the personal into a universal is not surprising … Within a family, you can see a country. Within a female conversation, you can see a female dynamic …
Q. You’ve said the film is not autobiographical. Explain.
A. The film is a combination of memoir and survey … For me, the film is not just about me; it’s about us and using myself as a catalyst for a conversation … I also felt politically, as a filmmaker, that I couldn’t ask other women to reveal what I wasn’t willing to reveal. If I’m not willing to put myself on the line, then who is? And often as filmmakers we ask others to bare their souls and we remain hidden … and I was tired of that … “Okay, here’s my life. I’ll share it with you; that’s my offering to the process.” Also, that was a political statement as a woman. A lot of times, to fit in society, we hide our real lives: we hide our abortions, we hide our affairs with married men, we hide our struggles to get pregnant, our fears … there are so many things we make hidden and what exists instead is this fantasy story which isn’t our lives … so it was also political to say—you’re going to see a real woman’s life with all the warts, all the stupidity, the obsessions, the bad relationships, the problems, but it will be real …
Q. Did any of your friends and family opt out of being filmed?
A. Yes … I don’t reveal the stories of my siblings and I only reveal a very small piece of my family history that I feel relates to why I didn’t want to be a girl. I have some friends who were uncomfortable about being on camera. I have a very good friend who is not in the film … It’s not an accurate portrait, it’s a slice of a part of my life …
Q. Your dad taught you the language of men. He represented freedom, but by the end of the film, your idea of him—and your mother—had evolved. Describe this.
A. I so idolized my dad—partially out of need, to save me from this house of women that I thought would suffocate and imprison me into a narrow female role … so I clutched my dad’s coattails … in a sense it did work. I got out, I got to do what I wanted, I broke all the rules that the women would have imposed on me … but I didn’t look at the negative things …
My parents are both wonderful people, but my dad also has a very skewed vision of women and didn’t always treat my mother very well verbally … And because he didn’t, I also had a skewed vision of women and I adopted his negative view on femaleness. So part of the process was seeing my mother and dad anew. Seeing that the things he’d put down in her were also wonderful female positive things …
I had to reevaluate who she was, too …While she had fears and a desire to control me, it was for a good reason; certainly, I’ve lived a lot of the things that she was afraid of. Often older women try to protect young girls, but in the protection, they also imprison them—and it’s not exactly their fault because we live in a dangerous world.
What happened in the film and in my life was a rebalancing of the image: to see my dad as a real person both good and bad and to see my mom as a real person both good and bad—and to allow myself to identify with her …
Q. Did you have female role models professionally?
A. My first role model as a filmmaker was Lina Wertmuller, a protégé of Fellini ... She was the most amazing thing I’d ever seen. She was the only director I ever idolized …When I decided to make films, I thought I’d make fiction; [documentaries] were accidental … It’s perfect that my first film was a documentary because I do think documentaries are actually suited for women because they’re so intimate, you can get involved in so many tasks … I’ve always loved to shoot and direct and produce … ironically, I’m preparing a fiction film now. Flying is as close to fiction as I’ve ever made—and I feel like it’s time to explore that next language.
Q. What does your executive producing entail?
A. Mostly for me, it’s about believing in a first time filmmaker ... It’s very hard to get your first film made … If I love something, I’ll try to raise money for it. I do give some artistic, editing, and producing guidance, but also a lot of it is saying, “I’ll add my name and let’s look for money” …
Q. Tell me about Flyingconfessions.com.
A. You can see different women’s stories (some are in the film, but some are not) … it’s a visual representation of the web of women. You can zoom into different women’s stories and their video clips … Eventually women will be able to submit their own videos of passing the camera.