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.
