Flying: Confessions of a Free Woman
Flying: Confessions of a Free Woman is a 2006 documentary film by Jennifer Fox. In six one-hour episodes, Fox travels from country to country with her camera recording numerous candid conversations, mostly with women. Its autobiographical dramatic narrative acts as a starting point to introduce reflections on various social and political issues of a modern female life, including marriage, reproductive rights, divorce, childbirth, sexual abuse, and female genital mutilation. The film is notable for its conversational "Pass the Camera" filming technique and is an example of cinéma vérité.
Episode Descriptions
Episode 1: No Fear of Flying
Meet Jennifer and her female friends, all in different predicaments: L’dawn is going through a seven-year divorce; Mindy is broken up with her rock-star boyfriend (although they still have sex); and Pat Cisarano, a blues singer, is diagnosed with a brain tumor. Jen herself spends a lot of time traveling the world for work: she is free and “single” and struggling with “commitment phobia”. She has a secret married lover in South Africa but decides to take a new boyfriend – Patrick, a Swiss man. What is this strange modern life all are living?
Episode 2: Test Piloting
Jennifer’s biological clock rings an alarm. Jennifer fought for sexual freedom her whole life in lieu of family and security, but now wonders if she missed some essential female experience? No matter how free she thinks she is, she can’t shake the message she was raised with: that women need a husband to have children. Jen takes off around the globe to see how women from other cultures are dealing with the issue. She decides enough is enough: she will stop using birth control with her two men and let fate decide…
Episode 3: Experiencing Turbulence
Jennifer returns home to a shocking message: her lover’s wife has found out about her affair. Her friends weigh in on the morality of relationships with married men. Meanwhile, Jen must pull herself together: Patrick is arriving for a vacation. Later in New York, she meets Paromita, a community organizer from India, who invites her to visit. She flies to Indian, where Paromita leads Jen on a surprising, sometime hilarious, exploration of sexual rules in Indian culture, making Jen reflect on her own “free” values…
Episode 4: Crash and Burn
Jen discovers she is pregnant but miscarries. Heartbroken, she heads for Russia where she meets Svetlana, whom she confides in about some unresolved secrets from her past. Sveta convinces Jen she must fly to Zurich to see Patrick, but can they see eye to eye about the miscarriage? Afterwards, she flies to Cambodia to meet Chanthol, who runs a shelter for trafficked women. There, Jen is pained to discover that women who are tricked into sex before marriage have little other choice than to become prostitutes…
Episode 5: Walking Away from the Wreck
Arriving in South Africa to teach, Jen finds her Lover separated from his wife. Can Jennifer and her Lover finally be together? She leaves briefly for Pakistan to meet women struggling against their society’s male domination. Returning to Africa to teach again, Jen visits her girlfriend Theresa and they dig deep about the repercussions of childhood sexual abuse. Again, Jen must fly to England to meet Amina, a Somali fighting FGM. When she returns to Africa, she discovers something about her Lover she never saw before…
Episode 6: Breaking the Sound Barrier
Patrick and Jen renew their relationship and they realize that time is running out to have a child. They decide to try IVF—In Vitro Fertilization. With Patrick in Zurich, Jen rushes into IVF in New York with the help of her close girlfriends. Finally, Patrick arrives for the big day of retrieval and implantation. But suddenly Jen’s Gram is hospitalized. As her mother, aunt and her gather around her dying grandmother, Jen begins to see the three women who raised her differently – and the result changes her life forever…
Theatrical Release and Critical Reception
Flying premiered internationally at the International Documentary Film Festival in Amsterdam (IDFA) on November 22, 2006, and domestically at the Sundance Film Festival on January 18, 2007; in both cases, it appeared as a Special Event. Following Sundance, Flying appeared at festivals in Croatia, Sweden, Greece, Israel, Canada, England, Italy, and France. Its US theatrical debut occurred July 4, 2007 at the Film Forum in New York City, and then embarked on a US theatrical tour, appearing in Chicago, Santa Monica, Hollywood, Minneapolis, San Francisco, Austin, Boston, and other cities.
Flying was very well received by critics on merit of both theme and form. In The New York Times, reviewer Jeanette Catsoulis described it as "an addictive soap about sexuality and sisterhood."[1] The New York Times had previously done a feature story on Flying in which John Anderson called it
An eclectic mix of film languages, including verité, self-shooting, diaries, narration, and what Ms.Fox calls 'passing the camera,' in which her subjects shoot one another as well as her. A personal memoir, feminist manifesto and examination of Global Woman! Ms. Fox seems intent on reflecting something altogether outside movies. Or even nonfiction. Balzac perhaps. Or George Eliot.[2]
The film also benefited from the endorsement of Sex and the City creator Candace Bushnell, who said it "should be required viewing for all women."
Television
Flying was broadcast on multiple television channels: TV 2 in Denmark (currently airing on DR); SBS in Australia; SVT in Sweden, YLE in Finland; Ikon/Humanistische in The Netherlands; BBC in the United Kingdom; and Sundance Channel in the US. Most of the funding for the film came from television; a large part came from HBO, which did not end up airing the film.
DVD Release
The six-hour DVD of Flying: Confessions of a Free Woman was released internationally in October 2007 and was sold exclusively through Zohe Film Productions, Jennifer Fox's production company. It was released domestically in May 2008 and distributed by Alive Mind Media; November 11, 2008 marked the retail release.
Footnotes
- ↑ Catsoulis, Jeanette. "Talking About Her Issues, Taking Them on the Road" The New York Times. July 4, 2007, http://movies.nytimes.com/2007/07/04/movies/04flyi.html
- ↑ Anderson, John. "Women's Stories, Including Her Own". The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/01/movies/01ande.html