FLYING: Confessions of a Free Woman

"Fox tackles real sociopolitical issues - from frank discussions about female sexuality to abuse, rape, and prostitution."

"Fox tackles real sociopolitical issues - from frank discussions about female sexuality to abuse, rape, and prostitution."

""...kind of like a real-life Sex and the City, but with a global edge."

"Jennifer Fox travelled the world to find a common bond among women. She turned her quest into a powerful documentary."

"Filmmaker Jennifer Fox knows a thing or two about bravery... her new Flying: Confessions of a Free Woman required bravery of a very different kind."

"Filmmaker Jennifer Fox turned her camera on women around the world and came back with a radicalized view of feminism and freedom."

"A real-life cross of Annie Hall and Erica Jong... Excellent (4 stars)."

"by layering her private soap opera...within an expansive meditative probe into the conditions of women everywhere... [Fox] she achieves something artistically sublime and yet emotionally generous."

"We're riveted... as we eavesdrop on these uninhibited conversations that Fox facilitates using a technique she calls "passing the camera". In short, she was Carrie, Miranda, and Samantha rolled into one - and content as a hat-tossing Mary Tyler Moore. No wonder Sex and the City creator Candace Bushnell loved this film."

"Fox, who stars in as well as directs the film, is a talented, inquisitive and vivid storyteller. I'd mark how effective FLYING is by the fact that I'm under no obligation to watch the rest of the series, but I'm eager to do so."

"Fox [is] a sexually liberated, feminist romantic with the remarkable courage to reveal herself on film, [with] high-achieving female friends around the globe whose views of women's roles are never less than fascinating."

"Shockingly personal, in that cozy way of a secret female conversation... Fox's soul-baring honesty and willingness to concede that she is still figuring out this life thing turns... into something profound and universal... Don't miss it!"

" ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ (4 Stars!)"

"[A] totally engrossing six-hour epic... What is true and unique is that Fox has to go it alone and learn what any real explorer knows: the way is deeply uncharted... [a] powerful humanity behind each woman's (and by inference, each man's) plight, and the skillful editorial decisions of how to present that plight... Flying is post feminist, in that the freedom that women fought so valiantly to achieve was granted, and then, like a Pandora's Box, whipped up a whole new set of woes."

"I was fascinated... Fox takes the docu form to a new place as she carries a lightweight Sony PDX 10 DV cam around with her, passing it to other people in conversation and filming herself... [she] found a wide range of articulate women of different classes and cultures, many of whom opened up about their hopes and limitations."

"A thought-provoking offering... this film is asking questions and considering issues that need more air time... There is a much longer conversation that needs to happen all over the world about what being a woman means today, and I thank Fox for starting us off on such a strong and honest foot."

"Second best miniseries I've seen this year... There are times when Fox's nervy endeavor to combine art and life obliges one to give way to the other, but her efforts and reflections throughout are riveting."

" ☆ ☆ ☆ (3 Stars!) This verite essay explores female sexuality as a key part of female freedom. Fox scrupulously chronicles her own day-to-day life. It's a credit to her artistry that this doc never veers into icky narcissism."

"Fox is one of the boldest, brightest, fascinating... ever to move across this much space... Nervy, emotional impact is in each and every passage... There's a wealth of stuff to talk about after this insistent provocation."

"Don't miss it... Flying: Confessions of a Free Woman, soars above most of the quickie digital nonfiction movies that have saturated the market of late; over five years in the making, this work is ambitious and innovative. Just as FLYING... was cathartic for the director and her participants to make, it may also prove liberating for viewers."

"Fox travels the globe to talk sex, marriage, babies, divorce, work, identity, oppression, socialization and abuse with her fascinating, far-flung friends. And their combined stories add up to something remarkable: a kaleidoscopic meditation on gender-as-destiny."

"The truth about women's sex lives is usually more entertaining than any fiction Hollywood could dream up. That's why hanging out and talking with friends often makes for a better night than going to the movies. In Flying, however, filmmaker Jennifer Fox manages to combine the two... Exactly the kind of film that should be shown to teenage girls in health class."

"By turns playful, sexy, tragic and contemplative, 'Flying' is an addictive soap about sexuality and sisterhood. And if that makes the average man's eyeballs roll, all the more reason for his honey to buy him a ticket."

"By the end of filmmaker Jennifer Fox's remarkably honest and unexpectedly engrossing self-portrait, you may feel you know her better than you know many of your close friends... In the end this very personal journey becomes a valuable universal document from which we can all learn about the way women live today."

"When I watched Jennifer Fox's FLYING: Confessions of a Free Woman, I was blown away. I don't say that often here, so sit up and take note. I've never seen a film that connected with me, as a woman, like this movie."

"Sometimes uncomfortably intimate but compulsively watchable."

"Fox creates a you-are-there intimacy by passing the camera around. Her gregarious openness about her own sexual experiences infectiously draws women in for the most private conversations... Like the best reality television, the camera catches raw moments of love and loss among her friends and family who we have come to know over time."

"Fox is on a journey to uncover her own personal definition of freedom, a definition that evolves throughout the film. Candid, raw and unflinching, Flying: Confessions of a Free Woman ultimately reveals that real love sets you free, even as it binds you to others."

"'What do women want?' asked a frustrated Sigmund Freud, and with 'Flying: Confessions of a Free Woman,' Jennifer Fox gives him an answer... The nerve it takes to expose herself - and her friends - is matched by Fox's ability to twist the confessional doc into a globe trotting highbrow soap opera. The work by celebrated Danish editor Niels Pagh Andersen is miraculous. Fox's technique - 'passing the camera' - gives the production a homemade feel. Or perhaps it could be called a woman's touch. But only in the most respectful sense."

by Melissa Silverstein

by Michele Meek

by Pamela Cohn

by Laura Smith

"The series is interesting, I think, because it asks every question that modern feminism should be asking itself, if it is to have any meaningful role in modern political discourse... she's asking the questions. At least people are still asking the questions."

"Illuminates the jagged edges of human desire... An eclectic mix of film languages... A personal memoir, feminist manifesto & examination of Global Woman. Ms. Fox... seems intent on reflecting something altogether outside movies. Or even nonfiction. Balzac, perhaps. Or George Eliot."

by Rachel Kramer Bussel

by Rachel Kramer Bussel

"The editing of the massive amounts of footage Fox acquired was entrusted to the award-winning Danish editor Niels Pagh Andersen. The fact that the "confessional" aspect of the film does not deteriorate into a narcissitic, solipsistic mess no doubt owes a great deal to Andersen's skills."

"I Was Not A Feminist"

"Triumphant, fearless, passionate and powerful, "FLYING: Confessions of a Free Woman" is an uninhibited epic of modern day women living, loving and struggling on their own terms and with the men in (and out of) their lives."

"The narrative thread of Fox's personal drama with all its sexy bits is the through-line with a serial quality Ébut the magic of the film is revealed in the intimate conversations between her and her friends on all topics on their minds and using Fox's "passing the camera" technique."

"This candid and totally addictive six-part docu-series offers an original look at the modern female lifeÉ Fox fashions a powerful, first-person commentary on the contemporary female condition. Part soap opera, part sociopolitical investigation, Flying is an authentic peek at the drama of daily life and the realizations that can be achieved with the courage of examination."

"The bottom line is that in "Flying," women get to tell their story in an uninhibited, uncensored way. The courage and openness shown by the women involved, and their vulnerability as they talk about intimate situations and deeply affecting events in their... make the women heroines."

"Another interesting meeting between directors and their colleagues and the audience took place on Wednesday, March 21 in the context of Just Talking, of the 9th Thessaloniki Documentary Festival - Images of the 21st Century. The participants were Paul Taylor (We Are Together/Troubled Innocence), Jennifer Fox (Flying: Confessions of a Free Woman/Special Screenings), Anna Kessisoglou (Coupapiti: White Man in a Deep Hole/Views of the World). Joining them was Alina Tutoveanu, a buyer for Rumanian television. "

"Sundance wasn't even a day old when The Sundance Channel bought Jennifer Fox's six-hour film Flying: Confessions of a Free Woman. Shot all over the world across 8 years, the cinematography is a conversation among Fox and the women she meets along the way; they pass a Sony PDX10 back and forth as they circle around and through the subjects of life: survival, freedom, gratitude, loss, power and fear, diminishment and emergence. And gossip. "

"Even before the festival began, cable channels began nibbling around its edges. The Sundance Channel licensed exclusive US television rights to Jennifer Fox's six-hour autobiographical film "Flying: Confessions of a Free Woman," which will debut at the fest. "

"Meanwhile, Sundance Channel took television rights for Jennifer Fox's "Flying: Confessions of a Free Woman," which is having its North American debut at Sundance this week. . . in the Spectrum section. "

"The Sundance Channel bought the television rights to the six-hour film "Flying: Confessions of a Free Woman," which will premiere in North America during the festival. The length of the film makes it ideal for television, and Sundance Channel intends to air it as a six-part miniseries. The autobiographical documentary was directed by Jennifer Fox, whose previous film, the ten-hour An American Love Story, also premiered at Sundance back in 1999."

"So what I did was decide to play around with the camera and figure out if there was a way that the camera could be in the conversation in a way that would be similar to the circular way that women talk... suddenly I meet a woman and I would say, "I want to ask you questions, but you can ask me a question." And they just start grabbing the camera, and the dynamic totally changed."

"Fox reveals herself in a candid and open way. Her level of introspection both in "Flying" and in this interview [are] both refreshing and fascinating, just as her documentary subjects have been. In "Flying" she and the women featured literally turn the cameras on themselves, and in a unique way."