Educational Media Reviews Online

Jennifer Fox’s Flying: Confessions of a Free Woman is a six part, 6 hour film about the filmmaker and many of the women she knows. Flying includes Fox’s and others discussions of marriage, abortion, feminism, mothering, mothers, fathers, love, lovers, babies and more. Running the confessional gamut from “I have a lover who is married,” to “I had an abortion,” this exhaustive series covers it all in a multiplicity of voices.

Primarily composed of scenes from Fox’s day-to-day conversations, musings and travels, and featuring her technique of “passing the camera,” she gets men and women to open up about an incredibly wide range of topics. While this is the film’s main strength, it is also its downfall in terms of classroom use. Flying is quite long and covers such an assortment of topics from such an array of people that it ultimately emphasizes breadth rather than depth with regard to any one story, country, topic or experience. There are periods of intensity where you feel as if there is a single narrative that concerns Fox’s trials and tribulations, but it is interrupted by (not interwoven with) other’s stories, crises and speculations. For instance, Fox discovers she is pregnant and then seemingly immediately has a miscarriage, which engenders speculation about her desire to be a mother, which is followed quickly by a conversation with her own mother and aunt about women and marriage and motherhood. This would make fine film fodder in and of itself, but in the same 58 minute segment, she talks to a friend with a brain tumor (and then an operation, chronic pain, speculation about “family” to take care of you, resisting an identity as a “sick person” etc.), a friend who breaks up with her boyfriend and then has an abortion and then marries the man, and an awkward phone call to her married lover where she hangs up when his wife answers. This is only a portion of what is shown in the first episode.

The “new camera technique, called ‘passing the camera’” (from the DVD case) is quite literal – she passes the camera to people she is talking to and they pass it back to her. This may add to the sprawling feeling of the film since everyone – and there are lots – has their say and is given their due. It isn’t so much that there is a lot in the film, but rather that there is everything in the film. Fox seemingly goes everywhere (New York, Pakistan, South Africa to name a few) and does everything – teaches, makes films, texts her boyfriend, takes a lover, “passes the camera” all around, visits rural women’s groups, hosts a Seder, visits her gynecologist – which makes for a long, thoroughly considered, sedately narrated confession.

Luckily for the educational market, Ms. Fox offers the very best way to use her film in a classroom setting. She includes the full series of episodes in an Educational Package, plus discs that contain chunks of her longer film organized by topic. This is an excellent way to turn six plus hours of “confessional” into 2 minute or even 10 minute portions that can be shown in class to spark discussion or serve as a writing prompt. Unfortunately, without the larger context of the film, the excerpts can come across as just what they are – excerpts chosen for their controversy, or turn of phrase. The series is a microscope on Fox’s everyday minutia (the personal) and the excerpts telescope out to show the people, places and events around the world (the political) in such a way as to disconnect the two when the point seems to be to have them converge. Yet it seems impossible to show the full film in class, even across several weeks. This is frustrating because there really is something for everyone in Flying.

The main reason I recommend this documentary with reservations is that I believe it would be difficult to use effectively in the classroom. As a tool for a researcher, such as a graduate student in Women’s Studies or a feminist filmmaker, this film is of great value. Portions of it can be put to use in a classroom setting with the DVD excerpts. For those library collections supporting a graduate program in filmmaking, feminist film studies, visual communications or women’s studies, this film would be a good addition. For a more general collection – public library, undergraduate college – I would have a hard time justifying the purchase for classroom use or general interest/leisure viewing.