A search on a
film website yields six
people in film named "Jennifer Fox", one of whom produced "Syriana" and
executive produced "Good Night, and Good Luck" and "A Scanner Darkly" --
though
that specific person is not the Jennifer Fox of this feature story.
[Which is neither here or there, or even important.] Perhaps though, the
six references are more fitting than coincidental, because in conversation Fox
frequently states that she is a schizophrenic personality of sorts. Before
the interview has ended she will have given reasons why she thinks of herself in
this way. Her latest film, a six-hour documentary entitled "Flying:
Confessions Of A Free Woman," is her most personally revealing. Fox, a
forty-something director, producer, cinematographer, has directed such
documentaries as "Beirut: The Last Home Movie" and the ten-hour documentary "An
American Love Story", which chronicled the ups and downs of an interracial
marriage between a black man and a white woman living in New York City.
(The film aired on PBS television in the U.S. over five nights in September
1999, and also played at the Film Forum in New York City during that year.)
Fox has also been a consultant on several documentaries and has executive
produced numerous others, including "Love And Diane" about a mother on welfare
trying to hold her relationship with her daughter together. "Flying" is
having its North American premiere at Sundance on January 25 under the
Festival's "Special Event" banner.
Fox reveals herself in a candid and open way. Her level of introspection
both in "Flying" and in this interview on one recent morning while she had some
precious downtime at Sundance was 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. Asked what
propelled Fox to embark on "Flying: Confessions Of A Free Woman" -- which is
divided into six one-hour chapters, the first of which, "No Fear Of Flying",
appears to be a rejoinder of sorts to Erica Jong's famous 1973 book Fear Of
Flying -- and the answer reveals a woman full of confidence and unafraid of
discovery and change. "I was in my forties and I lived the life I wanted,"
Fox said. "I didn't get married. I never wanted to. I didn't
have kids. I slept with the man I wanted to. I had relationships
with those I'd liked to. I pursued my career. I did everything, you
know, that I had fought for -- against the rules that I grew up with, which is
that you got married and had kids and those things. So I fought very hard
for those things, and I lived it. But suddenly in my forties I felt almost
a vast emptiness . . . there's nothing to show for these forty years."
There is a temptation to define the crossroads that the director describes
during the conversation as a brand of mid-life crisis -- but that term seems
trivial, misused, overused and just plain inappropriate.
For Jennifer Fox, it appeared to be more an epiphany of sorts, a revelation, an
awakening. An alert that demanded serious self-attention and raised
questions about time and perspective, questions that forced the filmmaker to put
her own life in specific, stunning focus under an exacting microscope -- her own
camera.
"It's a strange feeling when you -- when your life is a bunch of stories . . .
and there's no evidence, you know, it's sort of like there's no tracks in the
snow? So somehow I couldn't grasp what was the meaning of it all.
And I didn't feel there was any image out there to show me, to say, 'okay that
is what my life is . . .'". "Flying" was thus the avenue via which Fox
could capture the image of her life and the lives of women around the world.
"The film journey was a really real -- not constructed -- kind of crisis on my
part looking for, 'well, here's this life I've lived and what does it mean?
And how does it fit as a woman?' -- which is something I never -- I kind of
rejected the kind of classic female identity from the beginning . . . and was
absolutely not a feminist in my own mind." (Much later in the conversation
Fox would say that today she regards herself as a feminist, even though it
sounds very much from the lukewarm tone in her voice that she cares little
for the specific term. Perhaps this is part of the schizophrenic side of
her that she has alluded to. Perhaps it is not.)
One of the strongest ways in which Fox felt that
context could be achieved out of "crisis", as she described it, was to record
herself. Needing "desperate evidence of what I'm living", she decided to
make a relational story of her life, personal incidents, some very traumatic,
others triumphant, still others liberating, and obtain stories about other women
in various nations and continents around the world. "I tried to make sense
of this web of women weaving around the world." Fox wanted to understand
and explore their lives in relation to hers. She traveled
extensively to parts of Africa, India, Bolivia, Europe and elsewhere to speak to
women, many of whom were her good friends, for "Flying" (which is an appropriate
title for an obvious reason.)
As quickly as Fox details her ambitious exploration of a cross-section of
cosmopolitan women's lives to gain context and provide deeper relevance and
meaning for her own life, there is a seamless alacrity to her switch to heavier
tone and issue. "And then there's the other issue of the darker side of
female life, which is all the experiences that women have, and most men have no
clue about. Whether it's being taunted, being afraid . . . being abused .
. . every woman kind of goes through in different moments."
If what Jennifer Fox is doing sounds brave and courageous, it is. (Although she will beg to differ, saying that necessity, and neither courage nor bravery, dictated the exploration that is undertaken in "Flying".) The new documentary, dubbed "a six hour film series", consisted of 1700 hours of shooting film before Danish editor Niels Pagh Anderson got a hold of it and shorn off some 1,694 hours. The exploration of what it means to be a woman in the world today and yesterday, and the idea of womanhood, sisterhood, conversations between and amongst women -- real conversations -- are explored in depth in "Flying", and there is a hope on the director's part, that women and men get a glimpse of an understanding about who women really are, the power they have, and what their place in the world is.
In reaching the goal of conveyance of her ideas, Fox pointed to a big factor that
was integral to getting the process on film depicted in a non-traditional
filmmaking way. "The key principle for me was passing
[around] the camera," Fox said. Beyond that, there was not necessarily a
specific approach to the film -- it was more an evolutionary, organic process that
became the film. "The first thing for me was the way we spoke to each
other as women." The cinema verite approach, and the way in which Fox uses
it, was discreet, yet clearly different from what many documentaries commonly
employ in terms of the way the camera plays an observational role in "Flying".
There was the risk of having the "event" of the women who openly talk about their
daily lives, intimacies and crises being strictly objectified and "dwarfed" or
"destroyed" by the camera, making the participants self-conscious and
compromising the closeness and authenticity of the exchanges. As much as
possible, Fox made a point to not stage the conversations, or at least not make
the camera a character in the documentary.
As for the idea of comfort on camera, the filmmaker laid down some ground rules
with the participants. All had to agree to be in the room in front of the
camera, and hold the camera during their
conversations. The director imposed several unrestricted rules for
herself. "I would film myself all the time, whether I looked good, or
felt good, whether I just woke up in the morning or whether I had a hangover . .
. " As Fox talks about this, you get the sense that the camera relaxed
her, that the camera became a mirror of sorts. The visual proof of this is
likely to be gleaned from watching "Flying" in totality. Jennifer would
lay down a challenge to to the other women, by giving those she had just filmed
the camera "and say, 'hey, film me!'" Fox added that she would tell them
that she would say on camera whatever they wanted. She confesses: "And
that is kind of shocking to people. They're not used to it. [The
spontaneity and the unexpected.] They're used to their experts . . . but
suddenly I was saying, 'hey you're an expert, too.' If I'm willing as a
filmmaker to go on the line -- as much as I needed to go on the line -- and one
of the rules I had for myself was complete honesty. . . . I would reveal myself
to the best of my ability, totally -- as much as one can in a . . . forum like
film." Jennifer's openness had a positive effect on the other women, as
she recalled. "So I was so honest, and I think it relaxed people also.
You know, they felt if I was going there they could go there -- so passing the
camera really, really abated discomfort."
There is a sense that Fox and the women she
chronicles in this unique way were embarking on journeys within themselves, and
expressing their lives as they are as women in the world in which they live.
The cliches, stereotypes or pervasive notions of and about women, not only held
by many men, but also some women, are arrested to a very large degree in
"Flying", which is an absorbing, probing, matter-of-fact exploration of the
participants and their dilemmas, triumphs, affirmations and realities.
Charlene Tilton (formerly of the American television drama series "Dallas" --
which will be made into a feature film soon) once sung a popular song in the
1980's called "I've Never Been To Me". In it she sings, "I've been to
Georgia and California/Anywhere I could run/I took the hand of a preacher
man/And we made love in the sun/But I've ran out of places and friendly
faces/Because I had to be free/I've been to paradise/But I've never been to me."
Maybe it is a tad simplistic to analogize the journey that Jennifer Fox and the
women she chronicles around the world on her travels with a song. Yet
there is little doubt that Fox, her un-self-conscious camera, and the women who
speak freely and openly and naturally -- dig beneath the places that Tilton only
sings about or hints at. Fox would like to have her documentary made into
a book, or an audio book, or both. "I hope that someone out there would do
that," she said.
Watching parts of "Flying" there is actually much that would translate favorably
into a book. The openness and naturalness -- the tough situations --
letting viewers (and readers) into the real worlds of these women, who freely
confess, converse and commiserate with their fellow sisters of the world --
would likely focus a more serious and honest exploration of life as woman -- and
what the journey through life as a woman in her forties (or any age) truly means
and how that journey is. The many facets of Jennifer Fox, in the editing
room, in front of the camera, behind the camera, and as Jennifer Fox -- minus
the titles and accolades -- are a topic of conversation, which the filmmaker
spoke about.
Indeed, Jennifer Fox had a lot more to say on herself, her journey and numerous
other matters, situations and events which "Flying" covers. The
conversation will continue in a second, more extensive interview soon.
("Flying" will open theatrically in New York City at Film Forum on July 4.)
"Flying: Confessions Of A Free Woman", is to be screened on Thursday, January
25 at the Holliday Village Cinema I, Park City, Utah, at the Sundance Film
Festival at 2:00p.m.
Feature story originally published on
January 24, 2007.
Copyright The Popcorn Reel. 2007. All Rights Reserved.