Flying: Confessions of a Free Woman
Encyclopedia
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
.
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." The New York Times
had previously done a feature story on Flying in which John Anderson called it
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."
2006 in film
- Highest-grossing films :Please note that following the tradition of the English-language film industry, these are the top-grossing films that were first released in the United States in 2006...
documentary film
Documentary film
Documentary films constitute a broad category of nonfictional motion pictures intended to document some aspect of reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction or maintaining a historical record...
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
Marriage
Marriage is a social union or legal contract between people that creates kinship. It is an institution in which interpersonal relationships, usually intimate and sexual, are acknowledged in a variety of ways, depending on the culture or subculture in which it is found...
, reproductive rights
Reproductive rights
Reproductive rights are legal rights and freedoms relating to reproduction and reproductive health. The World Health Organization defines reproductive rights as follows:...
, divorce
Divorce
Divorce is the final termination of a marital union, canceling the legal duties and responsibilities of marriage and dissolving the bonds of matrimony between the parties...
, childbirth
Childbirth
Childbirth is the culmination of a human pregnancy or gestation period with the birth of one or more newborn infants from a woman's uterus...
, sexual abuse
Sexual abuse
Sexual abuse, also referred to as molestation, is the forcing of undesired sexual behavior by one person upon another. When that force is immediate, of short duration, or infrequent, it is called sexual assault. The offender is referred to as a sexual abuser or molester...
, and female genital mutilation. The film is notable for its conversational "Pass the Camera" filming technique and is an example of cinéma vérité
Cinéma vérité
Cinéma vérité is a style of documentary filmmaking, combining naturalistic techniques with stylized cinematic devices of editing and camerawork, staged set-ups, and the use of the camera to provoke subjects. It is also known for taking a provocative stance toward its topics.There are subtle yet...
.
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 FestivalSundance Film Festival
The Sundance Film Festival is a film festival that takes place annually in Utah, in the United States. It is the largest independent cinema festival in the United States. Held in January in Park City, Salt Lake City, and Ogden, as well as at the Sundance Resort, the festival is a showcase for new...
on January 18, 2007; in both cases, it appeared as a Special Event. Following Sundance
Sundance
Sundance Resort is a ski resort located northeast of Provo, Utah, spanning over on the slopes of Mount Timpanogos in Utah's Wasatch Range. Snow skiing began on the site in 1944...
, Flying appeared at festivals in Croatia
Croatia
Croatia , officially the Republic of Croatia , is a unitary democratic parliamentary republic in Europe at the crossroads of the Mitteleuropa, the Balkans, and the Mediterranean. Its capital and largest city is Zagreb. The country is divided into 20 counties and the city of Zagreb. Croatia covers ...
, Sweden
Sweden
Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....
, Greece
Greece
Greece , officially the Hellenic Republic , and historically Hellas or the Republic of Greece in English, is a country in southeastern Europe....
, Israel
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
, Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
, England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
, Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
, and France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
. Its US theatrical debut occurred July 4, 2007 at the Film Forum
Film Forum
Film Forum is a nonprofit movie theater located at 209 West Houston Street in New York City. It began in 1970 as an alternative screening space for independent films, with 50 folding chairs, one projector and a US$19,000 annual budget. Karen Cooper became director in 1972 and under her leadership,...
in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
, and then embarked on a US theatrical tour, appearing in Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
, Santa Monica
Santa Mônica
Santa Mônica is a town and municipality in the state of Paraná in the Southern Region of Brazil.-References:...
, Hollywood, Minneapolis, San Francisco, Austin
Austin
Austin is the capital of the U.S. state of Texas.Austin may also refer to:-In the United States:*Austin, Arkansas*Austin, Colorado*Austin, Chicago, Illinois*Austin, Indiana*Austin, Minnesota*Austin, Nevada*Austin, Oregon...
, Boston
Boston
Boston is the capital of and largest city in Massachusetts, and is one of the oldest cities in the United States. The largest city in New England, Boston is regarded as the unofficial "Capital of New England" for its economic and cultural impact on the entire New England region. The city proper had...
, and other cities.
Flying was very well received by critics on merit of both theme and form. In The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
, reviewer Jeanette Catsoulis described it as "an addictive soap about sexuality and sisterhood." The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
had previously done a feature story on Flying in which John Anderson called it
An eclectic mix of film languages, including veritéCinéma véritéCinéma vérité is a style of documentary filmmaking, combining naturalistic techniques with stylized cinematic devices of editing and camerawork, staged set-ups, and the use of the camera to provoke subjects. It is also known for taking a provocative stance toward its topics.There are subtle yet...
, 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.
The film also benefited from the endorsement of Sex and the City
Sex and the City
Sex and the City is an American television comedy-drama series created by Darren Star and produced by HBO. Broadcast from 1998 until 2004, the original run of the show had a total of ninety-four episodes...
creator Candace Bushnell
Candace Bushnell
Candace Bushnell is an American author and columnist based in New York City. She is best known for writing a column that was anthologized in a book, Sex and the City, which in turn became the basis for a popular television series and its subsequent film adaptations.-Personal life:Bushnell was born...
, who said it "should be required viewing for all women."