| FLYING: CONFESSIONS OF A
FREE WOMAN A Film by Jennifer Fox
Discuss this series with other film fans on:
http://www.myspace.com/americancinematheque
This film will be presented in
three installments at both the Aero & Egyptian Theatre.
"Jennifer Fox's "FLYING" should be required viewing for every
woman!"
- Candace Bushnel,
Writer/Creator, "Sex and the City"
"By turns playful, sexy, tragic and
contemplative, 'Flying' is an addictive soap about sexuality and sisterhood."
- The New York Times
The American Cinematheque at the Aero
& Egyptian Theatres and Artistic License Films presents a limited engagement
of FLYING: CONFESSIONS OF A FREE WOMAN, September
5 - 29. This global, real-life "Sex In The City" is relevant to all
women (and the men in their lives) -- married, single, divorced, with or without children,
in or out of relationships! Never before in history have so many women had such autonomy
to construct a life of their own creation. Yet 'choice' does not necessarily equal
happiness, let alone freedom. Meanwhile, old models of femaleness still haunt women
everywhere. In this six-hour tour de force, which began when independent woman and
filmmaker Jennifer Fox was an unmarried, 42-year old New Yorker with a jet-setting career,
a hip loft and a married lover in South Africa, Fox examines these topics over five years,
in seventeen countries from South Africa to Russia, India and Pakistan, through intimate
conversations with women of many ages, races, classes and cultural identities who 'pass'
Jennifer's camera to examine everything from sex to cancer. The film is broken into six
chapters which can be viewed separately. They will be presented several times so that it
is possible to catch them all even if out of order. Jennifer
Fox will be present for discussion at select screenings at the Aero Theatre.
Always feeling more akin to her father who seemed so
"free" compared to her housewive mother in a suburban home, Fox decided to
compare notes with her 21st century female compatriots around the world. To do so, Fox
employs an ingenious new camera technique, called "passing the camera," creating
a documentary language that mirrors the special way women communicate. Over intimate
conversations around kitchen tables, she initiates a groundbreaking dialogue among over
100 women, illuminating universal concerns across race, class and nationality. The film
creates a cross-cultural story about common experiences of modern female life on issues
such as love, socialization, marriage, work, child-rearing, aging, violence, sexual abuse,
spirituality, death, politics. Part delectable soap opera, sociopolitical inquiry, and
narrative experiments, FLYING: sweeps us up into an addictive international adventure
chronicled with sincerity, innovation and elegance.
This film is opening nationally. Artistic License is the
distributor. For a release schedule please see: www.flyingconfessions.com.
Opening Night, September 5th
Girls Night Out Reception Following at the Aero.
Thursday, September 27 -
7:30 PM
FLYING:
CONFESSIONS OF A FREE WOMAN, (Artistic License, 2006), directed by Jennifer Fox.
Chapter One: NO FEAR OF FLYING: Living the Free Life, 60 min. Shot
in USA (NYC, Wyoming), Lapland, South Africa (Capetown). In this first chapter,
filmmaker Jennifer Fox assesses her life as a modern woman, 42-year old woman with a
secret married lover in South Africa and a Swiss boyfriend (who she is not initially
attracted to), and peers into the lives of her girlfriends. L'Dawn, who battles a 7-year
divorce while raising two teen daughters; Mindy, broken up with her rock-star boyfriend
(but they still have sex); and Pat, a 50 year-old blues singer who 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." What is this
strange modern life all are living?
Chapter Two: TEST PILOTING: TICK TOCK
The Biological Clock, The Single Woman, 60 min. Shot in USA (NYC,
Wyoming, Philadelphia), Britain (London), France (Paris), South Africa (Johannesburg,
Capetown). 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. She stops in Wyoming to spend time with L'Dawn who is of native American descent
and who has been living near her childhood home with her daughters since her divorce
financially forced her out of NYC.
Friday, September 28 - 7:30
PM
FLYING:
CONFESSIONS OF A FREE WOMAN, (Artistic License,2006), directed by Jennifer Fox.
Chapter Three: EXPERIENCING
TURBULANCE: The Price of Sexual Freedom, 60 min. Shot in USA
(NYC, Massachusetts, San Francisco, Philadelphia), India (Bombay, Calcutta, Nagpur).
Jennifer returns home to a shocking answering machine message: her lover's wife has
discovered the affair. Her friends weigh in on the morality of relationships with married
men. Meanwhile, Jen must pull herself together: Patrick is arriving from Switzerland for a
vacation. Later in New York, she meets Paromita, a community organizer from India, who
invites her to visit. She flies to India, where Paromita leads Jen on a surprising,
sometime hilarious, exploration of sexual rules in Indian culture, making Jen reflect on
her own "free" values. She is surprised to learn that there is no word in this
culture's language for female masturbation and the women in the village where Paromita
works cannot fathom how it would be done! Many of them are very young widows since the
tradition is for men to marry women considerably younger than them. Even the free-thinking
Paromita gets the giggles over the thought of masturbation.
Chapter Four: CRASH AND BURN:
The Things All Women Share, 60 min. Shot in USA (NYC),
Russia (Moscow & suburbs), Britain (London); Cambodia (Phnom Pen and Poi Pet). Jen
discovers she is pregnant, but miscarries. Heartbroken, she heads for Russia where she
meets Svetlana, whom she confides in about some unresolved sexual 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.
Saturday, September 29 - 7:30
PM
FLYING: CONFESSIONS OF A FREE
WOMAN, (Artistic License, 2006), directed by Jennifer Fox. Chapter Five:
WALKING AWAY FROM THE WRECK, The Secret of Male Power, 60 min. Shot
in South Africa (Johannesburg, Capetown), Pakistan (Islamabad & Afghanistan
Border), Somali Exiles in England (Manchester & Sheffield). 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 Female Genital Mutilation.
When she returns to Africa, she discovers something about her lover she never saw before.
Chapter Six: BREAKING THE SOUND BARRIER, Female
Life Backwards: New Technology for the "New Woman," 60 min. Shot
in USA (NYC, Massachusetts, Philadelphia, Wyoming, Florida). Despite the
fact that they still live in different countries, though Patrick passes through NYC for
work periodically, 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. She and her mother and aunt gather around her dying grandmother. Jen
begins to see the three women who raised her differently and begins to feel like less of
an outsider amongst this group of closely bonded women. |
