flying : confessions of a free woman
jennifer fox, director / producer of flying: confessions of a free woman. photo: zohe films
please talk about how the idea for “flying: confessions of a free woman” came about and evolved .
filmmaker jennifer fox in a scene from “flying: confessions of a free woman. ” image courtesy of film forum .
the director jennifer fox, as she appears in her documentary flying: confessions of a free woman,  after a positive pregnancy test .
“absolutely, ” ms. fox said with a smile. “or we could call it ‘confessions of an imprisoned woman trying to be free. ’ ”
2007–2009: lecturer and ran master classes at universities, tv stations and festivals around the world combined with the screening and theatrical release of my film series, “flying: confessions of a free woman. ”
in g2 today, zoe williams speaks with us film - maker jennifer fox about her documentary series, flying: confessions of a free woman, a quest which took new yorker fox across the globe to learn about the lives of women, and herself in the process .
jennifer fox dvd package. receive signed editions of jennifer fox’s previous films: beirut: the last home movie, an american love story and flying: confessions of a free woman. your name will also appear on the donor wall and you will receive exclusive project updates and the email newsletter. (145 euro est. )
flying: confessions of a free woman, the new groundbreaking 2 part documentary film in which critically acclaimed filmmaker jennifer fox lays bare her own turbulent life to penetrate what it means to be a free woman today. she travels to over 17 countries to understand how diverse women define their lives, when there is no map. the film is a cross - cultural story about common experiences of modern female life. part delectable soap opera, sociopolitical inquiry, and narrative experiment, flying sweeps us up into an addictive international adventure chronicled with sincerity, innovation and elegance. urltoken
“flying: confessions of a free woman, ” a documentary made for television in six one - hour segments, will open as a two - part film starting wednesday at film forum in new york. the documentary is a delicate construction asking a delicate question: is there anything in common between ms. fox, a liberal, middle - class manhattanite, and, say, a prostitute in cambodia ?
for most people, one therapist is enough; for jennifer fox, a manhattan filmmaker in her 40s, exploring what she cheerfully calls her “messed - up self” required a bit more input. in “flying: confessions of a free woman, ” ms. fox takes her issues on the road, soliciting advice from female friends in more than a dozen countries. in the process, she learns that she is not unique .
a 42 - year - old woman is discussing dating in new york. she agonises about whether or not to stay with her married south african lover or commit to a new relationship with a swiss film - maker called patrick. sound familiar? the show has already been described by candace bushnell of sex and the city fame as
required viewing for every woman
. but flying: confessions of a free woman is not a drama or soap opera; rather the two - parter, filmed over the course of five years by the american director jennifer fox, is going out tonight as part of bbc4' s storyville documentary strand .
i had never filmed myself before. i had never wanted to put myself in a film, but now i picked up the camera, because it felt like the only way i figure out how to see myself in the world as a woman–literally place myself in my house, on the street, in a city. my need to find out who i was as a woman became the key to make a film about female life today and the way women speak. (and of course, i had to call it “confessions of a free woman” because i had to laugh at my own slavery! )
65. flying: confessions of a free woman (jennifer fox, 2006). an amazing six - hour, six - part, documentary of epic proportions in which we follow the filmmaker as she travels around the world asking her women friends how they construct and imagine their lives as she struggles to figure out her own. in her attempt to capture how women talk, fox filmed her conversations with friends using a technique she calls “passing the camera. ” read my post on the film, “ flying takes documentary form to new heights. ”
fascinated by stories of the aristocratic bustros family, who remained in their large 19th century mansion in the mostly deserted downtown section of beirut during the lebanese civil war, director jennifer fox (flying: confessions of a free woman, an american love story) leaves n. y. u. film school to document her good friend gabby bustros' return to her family home. filming everything from an auto race to an elaborate family wedding, from a festive costume party to a group sailboat outing, beirut: the last home movie
director jennifer fox ‘s “ flying: confessions of a free woman ” is a six hour - long film (divided into one hour episodes) that maps the world of female life and sexuality today–from the dramatic turns in her own life to the stories of women around the globe that shed light on the “universal issues all women face. ” the film uses a “groundbreaking” camera technique, called “passing the camera, ” creating a new type of documentary language and storytelling that mirrors the “special way” women communicate. the sundance ’07 film opens at new york’s film forum on july 4th .
fox is a serious film - maker. she won the grand jury prize at sundance for her film beirut: the last home movie. for the tv series an american love story she lived with a mixed - race couple and their children for two years. and in flying: confessions of a free woman, she doesn' t just hang out in her tribeca loft with her sex and the city girlfriends. she visits women around the world, from new york to south africa, britain to cambodia, russia to pakistan .
she co - produced, directed and shot the acclaimed six - part film, flying confessions of a free woman through a unique danish co - production, funded by the danish film institute, tv - 2 denmark, bbc, arte, yle - 1, sbs, svt, icon & humanist channels netherlands, the sundance channel, and a creative capital grant. flying premiered at the international documentary film festival in amsterdam (idfa) in 2006 and the sundance film festival in 2007 and did a 20 - city theatrical tour in north america before airing on the bbc, svt, tv - 2, yle, sbs, and the sundance channel in 2008 .
her last work, the cutting edge, six - part, “flying confessions of a free woman” was made through a unique danish co - production, funded by the danish film institute, tv - 2 denmark, bbc, arte, yle - 1, sbs, svt, icon & humanist channels netherlands, the sundance channel, and a creative capital grant. flying premiered at the international documentary film festival in amsterdam (idfa) in 2006, the sundance film festival in 2007 and did a 20 - city theatrical tour in north america before airing on the bbc, svt, tv - 2, yle, sbs, and the sundance channel in 2008. it is currently available on dvd and in educational release .
fast - forward 34 years. for flying: confessions of a free woman, director jennifer fox spent five years visiting 17 countries, making countless women friends, and shooting 1, 700 hours of film in her search into the identity of contemporary women. using her own life and loves as the film' s central conceit, fox sought not to create a film about herself, but to weave a connection with other women and their stories. the wingspan of this audacious and exhilarating six - part, six - hour series stretches from phnom penh to islamabad, from lapland to capetown, and effectively employs flying metaphors throughout. chapter titles include
test piloting ,
experiencing turbulence ,
crash and burn ,
walking away from the wreck
and
breaking the sound barrier .
appropriately, flying opens at the film forum in new york city on independence day and screens through july 17 .
filmmaker jennifer fox' s six - hour documentary flying: confessions of a free women, represents the first time the acclaimed director has allowed herself to step in front of the camera, baring (almost) all about her family, friendships, and romantic relationships. she' s already detailed here at huffpo her evolution as a feminist, and the film takes the phrase
the personal is political
and mines it for all it' s worth. fox begins each of the six segments that make up the film with old movies from her childhood, setting the stage for her desire, above all else, to be
free .
in our post - 9 / 11 world, the phrase
fear of flying
has a very different meaning from the one championed by erica jong in her 1973 bra - burning manifesto of liberation. jong' s iconic fear of flying examined the female psyche (primarily hers) through the man - woman conundrum, sex, marriage, divorce, motherhood and that elusive shangri - la, freedom. and jong modernized the quotidian sexual fantasy into a rousing
zipless fuck .
prime members enjoy free two - day shipping and exclusive access to music, movies, tv shows, original audio series, and kindle books .
years passed and i continued to try to imagine how my new idea could be conceived. meanwhile i entered my forties and a major love affair with a man who was supposed to be “my one and only” ended abruptly. when he bailed on me, all my ideas about relationships, love, the rules of life and even god fell apart. suddenly i understood that i had been carrying around all these old values of what a woman should be like, while externally defying all those values. people thought of me as a “free” woman, but i knew inside i wasn’t free at all. i felt invisible because i wasn’t married and didn’t have kids–even though i had never wanted those things !
but even the people most intimately involved with “flying” are surprised by ms. fox’s candor. “we shared intimacies in a very typically girl - talk way, ” said caroline goldie, a berlin filmmaker whose bout with cancer became a piece of the “flying” fabric, “although i must be honest, i was a bit more guarded than jen about what i was prepared to say on camera. ”
07. pay for the creation of an educational guide to accompany the film to schools and universities. the educational guide will also be made available for free download from the website .
as one of the greatest works of english literature and names his son robert louis. maltby’s choice of favourite book is a reflection of his own character: he is a free spirit who leads an unconventional life of poverty and intellectual curiosity (followed by his son until the latter goes to school and the weight of social disapproval leads to the end of their idyll) .
and indeed there are great levelling moments in flying that stop us being cultural tourists. many of the women she interviews around the world, especially those in poor rural areas, give her tough - love advice about flaky married lover, kai. and fox likes the fact that many of them laugh about her obsession with being a free, hyper - sexual woman. there are other things to worry about – work, family, survival – not just orgasms, they remind her. researching the whole issue of sex trafficking, too, makes fox confront the fact that she herself was pressured into having sex by a sports coach when she was only 13 .
the irony is that in hating her as a child, i too had ended up with a bellyful of rage that i carried everywhere! during the making of flying, i started to let go of my anger towards my gram. i thought if i could break free of some of the shackles passed down generation to generation by the women in my family, than i could actually change history backwards. suddenly i felt part of the tree of women in my family; my gram was my roots, my mother and aunt the trunk, and i the branches. if any one part of the tree could be rejuvenated than the rest of the tree would become healthier. i think my journey towards liberation as a woman actually helped my grandmother, mother, and aunt become freer. although i suspect this idea must sound a little mad !
has written narratives in the tradition of stevenson, e. g. le chercheur d’or (1985, which includes a relationship between the narrator and the indigenous woman ouma, a name borrowed from ‘falesá’), la quarantaine (1995), and poisson d’or (1997) .
this film premiers july 4th - 17th at the film forum in nyc. it is going to be an exciting and groundbreaking film that i' m sure will create quite a buzz. i' ve seen the film and was truly awestruck by its profundity and brave exploration of women all over the world. the filmmaker, jennifer, bares her soul as she uses herself as a tool to address the issues that face women no matter their background or ethnicity. it is a film that all should see, male or female, to better understand the world around us and the strides that still need to be taken to ensure equality and peace. besides, its political and societal significance, flying: confessions of a free women, is also a compelling and soap opera like film that, despite its length, flies by in a whirlwind of emotional drama and hilarity. thank you to jennifer fox for giving so many different women a voice. this film is a must see !
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 .
jennifer fox' s flying is quite an honest search into the hearts and minds of women around the world on the subject of love, men, and children. it is fascinating to hear women' s perspectives and to simultaneously see the unfolding of one woman' s journey into learning about herself and what she thought was her idea of love at the same time. heartwarming and thoughtful, it is a candid and vulnerable auto - videography that stays with you long after you have viewed it. it also encourages discussion afterwards .
“i could really see this being a book, ” ms. fox, 47, said of her latest documentary, which is scheduled for several european television outlets late this summer. “flying, ” made over five years, is part personal memoir, feminist manifesto and diagnosis of the state of global woman. it is also an eclectic mix of film languages, including vérité, self - shooting, diaries, narration and what ms. fox calls “passing the camera, ” in which her subjects shoot one another as well as her .
declared himself a ‘stevenson worshipper’, praised his ‘marvellous lightness’, and wrote: ‘i love stevenson because he gives the impression he is flying’ (calvino 1955 / 1995: 968 - 9, calvino 1959 / 1995: 1528 - 9) .
according to the publicity, flying tackles questions that are at once personal and universal. does choice equal happiness? what does it mean to be a free woman today? i' m not quite convinced. yes, there are moving moments – when fox films pat in remission; or visits a berlin - based film - maker who has fallen in love again during treatment for ovarian cancer – but they often feel pretty incidental to jennifer' s big love story. when she meets two women in rural pakistan – who humblingly have given up the chance of marriage in order to study and campaign – you think ,
oh god, she' s not going to bang on about her love triangle again, is she ?
you know, it' s funny why people don' t end up in a film─and why they do. in flying, people assumed that my lover kai didn' t want to be filmed, but in fact i never asked him. he was married, he had a family, and i never thought to expose his face, because that would be a complete act of betrayal. whereas with patrick i pushed quite hard to let me film him as you see in the film. it' s not very nice of me to have done that, but i wanted you (the audience) to know that i can be a very driven woman─a woman for whom work is everything. but the stakes for filming patrick were much lower than if i filmed my lover, kai. i couldn' t live with myself and reveal his face on screen .
men dominate much of the talk in “flying, ” whether the topic is new love, old love, child support or paternal influence. for her part ms. fox makes it clear throughout the film that as a girl she wanted a life like her father’s; he was a pilot, among other things, a man with a career and a life outside the home. her mother, on the other hand, was busy rearing five children .
part personal diary, part transglobal slumber party, “flying” is a six - hour exploration of modern womanhood humming with talk of men. during kitchen - table chats and late - night meltdowns, women as diverse as an egyptian journalist and an indian civil rights lawyer struggle to control their finances and their fertility .
ida presents a special screening of mcqueen with moderated q & a. the film is a personal look at the extraordinary ...
he argues that we need more confessional documentaries, not fewer .
i think you could do good confessions or bad confessions. documentary isn' t de facto worthy. we always try to buck this trend: in fact, we say you should enjoy storyville as you would grazia or the independent, there' s no difference .
he argues that the slot is a place for any sort of programme – different styles, different attitudes, different subjects – the only requirement being that they should all be strongly narrative. and he points out that the most powerful section of the film – the death of fox' s grandmother and her rapprochement with her mother and aunt – doesn' t have a single boyfriend in shot .
a traveling program of films opens tonight in nyc presented by what moves you? , cinema tropical and the center for latin american and caribbean studies at nyu. the documentary film series is committed to enriching the discussion on a wide variety of issues pertaining to mexican immigration to the us. all films are in spanish with english subtitles and all screenings are free and open to the public .
in this two part documentary, master storyteller jennifer fox lays bare her own turbulent life to penetrate what it means to be a free woman today. as her drama of work and relationships unfolds over four years, our protagonist travels to over seventeen countries to understand how diverse women define their lives when there is no map. employing an ingenious new camera technique called
passing the camera
, fox creates a documentary language that mirrors the special way women communicate. over intimate conversations around kitchen tables from south africa and russia to india and pakistan, she initiates a groundbreaking dialogue among women, illuminating universal concerns across race, class and nationality .
the filmmaker traveled alone through what are often considered some of the most dangerous regions on the planet, but because of the nature of her project, she always made advance arrangements with the women she planned to meet .
and being under the care and guidance of a local woman meant that i was much safer than i would have been had i been on my own ,
she concedes .
this will be the lazy woman' s version of jennifer merin' s very cool top 25 list of docs by and / or about women that she feels are must - sees. here, instead of a description by me, you get a link to the film' s website, or to a site that says something interesting about the film - - infinite numbers of worlds to choose from, that i would never deny anyone. writing film synopses right now, not so much .
in explaining her chosen style, fox says :
this is a real life, i' m sick of fake lives being shown. this is a real female life, you may hate it, you may think i' m self - involved, i am. you may think i' m confused, i am. but this is actually exposing the inside of one woman' s real life and not a fantasy .
the central board of film certification (cbfc) cleared the film with a u / a certificate after a total of eight cuts designed to tone down the action sequences and mute a particular word. tanuj garg, representative of balaji motion pictures stated the cuts were less than a minute of screen time. [ 9 ]
a year - and - a - half in the lives of an interracial couple and their two biracial daughters .
the professional and personal life of a sexual surrogate begins to unravel when she starts working with a new client .
jennifer has executive produced many award - winning films including: “love & diane, ” “on the ropes, ” “double exposure, ” “project ten: real stories from a free south africa, ” “cowboys, lawyers and indians”, “absolutely safe? ”, and presently the fiction feature film, “upstate” and “cat scratch fever” .
wrote a short text of praise (7 december 1896) to the members of a stevenson memorial committee for the erection of a stevenson monument or memorial in edinburgh (mallarmeé 1896 / 1979: 879 - 80) .
in flying, the
passing the camera
technique becomes the great equalizer, as no one person in the conversation has more power than the other. both film each other, both can ask questions of the other, both people are equally on the line .
on top of that ,
fox adds ,
the whole question, ‘can a layperson shoot with a camera?' is so obviously answered in the film. my camera instruction to each woman took about 30 seconds, and within 30 seconds they were filming me, often quite beautifully. this was true whether it be women in new york, britain, india or pakistan - - virtually anywhere .
director jennifer fox does a q & a after a sold - out screening of my reincarnation at the singapore film festival and explains the importance of the film' s kickstarter campaign (urltoken) .
the journey of flying was literally sewing myself─and my mother, my grandma and my aunt─into a fabric of history, way beyond our personal experiences. suddenly, i understood that my gram, for example, whom i felt terribly hurt by as a child, was acting out very universal patterns of female life. her role in life was prescribed from birth because of her gender. part of why she hurt me was to make sure that i would become a
good girl ,
meaning prim and proper and essentially sexless─so that ultimately i would be accepted by society through a
good
marriage. during flying, i understood that the tiny, suffocating role she was trying to shove me into was the role she had been forced to fit into when she was a child. it was the only role she could imagine for me─the role that women have been forced to play throughout history and in almost every society on the planet .
“flying“ is a particularly well - suited teaching tool because of its experimental camera techniques accompanied with strong narrative storytelling and editing. i have taught hundreds of classes using excerpts of the film to incorporate the camera methods and demonstrations into class participation. it is also an excellent launch to talk about international fundraising and distribution as it was a danish co - production and was pre - sold to seven television stations internationally. (complete teaching engagement list available upon request) .
the last straw came when i hit my own
middle - age - single - woman - crisis
in my early forties. for all i had accomplished, i felt none of it mattered because i hadn' t married and didn' t have kids. now the complication was: i didn' t ever want to marry or have children, but that didn' t stop me from feeling i should have these things! and even more i felt that because i didn' t have a family, my life was invisible. i kept thinking of all the relationships i had over the past 20 years that had come and gone, yet i was the only one who carried my history. the whole crisis made me realize that i had never faced the issues i had as a result of being a woman. all my life i had rejected all the traditional female values, only to be stabbed in the back by my own conformist subconscious mind at age forty! i had to do something to understand myself as a woman! after 20 years of psychotherapy, suddenly filming myself seemed like the only way out of my depression. what' s a more perfect mirror, but a video camera? beside which, it was the only tool i knew well .
the technical limitations were a means of lightening the process and getting around the critical mind, both my own and that of the other woman. i wanted to force myself to work fast and light; i wanted to throw the camera on a table, a basin or a countertop. it should all have the feeling of: “oh we’re just fooling around and having fun! ” equally, i decided that i would allow myself to film enormous amounts of footage (we ended up with 1600 hours) knowing that i would only use a small portion of the footage in the film. i accepted that a lot of the footage would be crap, but i knew by lessening the importance of any given shooting day, i would relax and overall i would get those few authentic moments in return .
aileen: life and death of a serial killer, nick broomfield, 2003 .
of lion and of unicorn: essays on anglo - scottish literary relations in honour of prof. john macqueen
53. this is what democracy looks like (jill friedberg & rick rowley, 2000). edited from footage shot by over a hundred media activists, this film presents a political and emotional account the 1999 wto protests in seattle. an important example of the power of collaborative filmmaking. presents a unique point of view made possible by weaving together footage from a hundred cameras. a glimpse of the future of documentary film made possible by collaboration on a grand scale .
34. hearts of darkness: a filmmaker’s apocalypse (fax bahr, george hickenlooper, and eleanor coppola, 1991). a film about the making of apocalypse now and among the best “making of” documentaries .
the premiere of a new restoration by anthology film archives of the independent documentary from 1959, the cry of jazz, with filmmaker, edward o. bland .
we are pulling this article from the archive to promote our upcoming doc u: shooting overseas: making your doc on foreign soil at the afci locations show at the l. a. convention center. on friday, june 15, we are hosting a panel of doc filmmakers who have traveled the globe and film commissioners whose job it is to make filming in their countries as straightforward as possible. register for the afci locations show and rsvp for this free doc u today !
11. tokyo olympiad (kon ichikawa, 1965). a montage of the 1964 olympics. a large number of camerapeople captured the event which through editing become cinematic poetry .
51. buena vista social club (wim wenders, 1999). a poetic documentary wherein guitarist ry cooder gathers together twelve legendary musicians and resurrects the music of pre - revolutionary cuba for a series of recording sessions and performances. a variety of performances and observational footage are inter - cut with interviews of the musicians reminiscing in a backdrop of a decaying but colorful havana. the lush and colorful images were captured using a mix of minidv and digital betacam in the pal format, helping to de - stigmatize the use of video for films destined for theatrical release .
while critics rejected stevenson as a major writer for many decades, creative writers continued to admire the work of this ‘writers’ writer’. what follows is only the start of a collection of observations on stevenson by writers .
’s essay la pensée radicale (1994) centred on the relationship of thought and the real has as an epigraph a quotation from ‘a humble remonstrance’ (‘the novel is a work of art not so much because of its inevitable resemblance with life but because of the insuperable differences that distinguish it from life’) .
): strunsky was to deliver a speech on w. e. henley to the woman’s press association; it was later published as ‘on the principle of loyalty in biography’, impression quarterly, march 1902. in it, she defended henley ’s biographical sketch of stevenson, ‘r. l. s. , ’ pall mall magazine, december 1901, against charges of disloyalty. henley was responding to sir graham balfour’s the life of robert louis stevenson (1901), which he considered false but which was loved by stevenson’s admirers. ]
33. american dream (barbara kopple, 1990). a good example of a respectful filmmaker - subject relationship, the antithesis of moore’s style as exemplified in roger & me .
for example, arriving in india, she met with paromita, a 32 - year - old activist, and was
amazed
at how few people bothered her on the street because paromita served as a guardian of sorts. fox had traveled in india many times as a single woman and had been
constantly harassed and even got into some pretty awful situations .
thanks to paromita, fox was able to integrate into indian culture
in a really wonderful and seamless manner. this vision of another culture was great for the film, but it was also great for me personally because i had the best experience of india that i ever had .
of all this group [ writers of ‘critical and miscellaneous prose’ in the victorian age ], the greatest was robert louis stevenson. versatility was one of stevenson’s most conspicuous qualities, for, besides being the foremost essayist since lamb and a master of fiction, whether in the form of romance or in that of short story, he was also a dramatist and a poet. [ … ]
i admire some of his poems and a great deal of his prose’; in another letter of the same year he says ‘i think it was stevenson' s method of describing action without adjectives or adverbs which taught me a good deal. ’ (urltoken )
there are never pat answers or neat resolutions on offer, although he does go see his mother after eighteen years and walks away better understanding her side of things, as do we. she is a woman who, with the help of a new husband and her steadfast faith, has moved on, forgiven. but not forgotten. there is no tearful family reunion; there is no contrived circle of love and healing at the end of the film; there is no simplistic redressing of the morass of plain wrongness that has transpired between this parent and his female children. there is just moving on, living, dealing. some might say there are massive amounts of denial on display. this viewer thought there was very little of that, actually .
teaching a six - week intensive program for new filmmakers to create their first documentary short during the class period. students are taken through all aspects of documentary, from developing language and picking a subject to the craft of editing a scene and storytelling. students end up with a finished short documentary film of 5 - 10 minutes .
jennifer is the author of the screenplays, lila: a fairtale, a feature, co - written with oren moverman, and the short films, the woman with one breast and birdie in paradise. she has just completed the television pilot, the good egg, co - written with deborah copaken kogan. she wrote and is developing the fiction feature screenplay, the tale, for which she was chosen for a dutch binger directing lab fellowship in 2012 and in 2013 to participate in trans - atlantic partners (tap), a co - production development program between europe, canada and the usa .
sim: i see this kind of nuance in the work of your cinematographer, rein kotov. his camera work is really extraordinary. these quiet, formally framed moments become so vital to a viewer’s emotional journey with these characters. we really get a sense of where we are and what it feels like. and a lot of it is really ugly. he bothered to go and find a good amount of beauty there .
, in a letter to the times 18 april 1922 talks of ‘the stevenson cult’ and the reaction to it in the article by maurice hewlett on 13 th april. ‘a few charming essays in a minor key, some short stories – not all of them first rate – a quantity of indifferent verse, and a couple of excellent books for boys – these it [ criticism today ] says are not so wonderful a performance after all’. ‘two books – “kidnapped” and “ treasure island ” (with “weir of hermiston” a problematic third) – are linked to stevenson’s supreme achievement. to these i should add “thrawn janet”, a story seldom mentioned by critics’ .
jennifer has executive produced many award - winning films including: love & diane; on the ropes; double exposure; cowboys, lawyers and indians; absolutely safe? ; the ten part television series, project ten: real stories from a free south africa, and the fiction feature film, upstate. she has consulted on numerous documentaries, including the sundance grand prize winner, southern comfort and the slamdance grand prize winner, stone reader .
61. born into brothels (zana briski and ross kauffman, 2004). a portrait of children of prostitutes living in calcutta’s red - light district, a slickly produced documentary with beautiful images .
jennifer fox is an internationally acclaimed director, producer, camera - woman and educator. her first film, beirut: the last home movie was broadcast in twenty countries, released theatrically in nine, and won seven international awards, including best documentary film and best cinematography at the 1988 sundance film festival and best documentary at the 1988 cinema du reel festival, paris .
, not only philosopher and critic but one of the great german prose writers of the twentieth century, thought highly of stevenson .
47. little dieter needs to fly (werner herzog, 1997). this film tells the story of dieter dengler, vietnam veteran who grew up in a germany. dengler recalls an early memory of american fighter - bombers destroying his village in which he saw one of the pilots and from that day forward he had to be a pilot. he eventually became a u. s. navy pilot and while flying in vietnam he was forced to make a crash landing in laos. he was captured and became a prisoner of war. eventually dengler escaped. for the film dengler returns to laos and thailand with herzog in order to recreate his experiences. a character based documentary done in a manner only herzog could make. but wait, there’s more. herzog also made a fiction film based on the story titled rescue dawn, providing an opportunity to reflect on the differences between documentary and narrative filmmaking (especially since herzog often makes documentaries with narrative elements as well as narratives with documentary elements) .
the spring 2010 issue of documentary magazine, the publication of the international documentary association, focuses on festivals and film distribution - - two things of which i know a thing or two .
she calls it
radical honesty
. there could be no preparation: no make - up, no fixing up clothing, or adjusting her emotional state. when, in the middle of filming, she found herself in a deep personal crisis, it had to be reflected on screen .
i thought:' ok, i will use myself as a guinea pig.' after all, how could i ask another woman to go on the line if i wasn' t prepared to go on the line myself ?
an homage to swedish filmmaker roy andersson' s songs from the second floor, living room is a poetic tribute to every day finns, six of whom are shown in captivity in their living rooms. humorous, touching, irreverent and profound, the film is beautifully shot in wide - angle, static portraiture with the subjects (all men) acting out their stories in mini - passion plays. these are human stories of life changes, loneliness and the irrevocable passage of time. these men are in different phases of life, each of them looking for understanding and communion. you can watch the trailer here. the screening is free and you can drink booze while watching !
57. the wild parrots of telegraph hill (judy irving, 2003). delightful story of a modern - day st francis and his relationship with a flock of wild parrots in san francisco. beautifully shot on 16mm film, it’s not only a great story, but a feast for the eyes, the soft image with rich colors does justice to the story .
, t. s. eliot praises the ebb - tide (' a triumph' which combines' truth and strangeness') and later in a review of chesterton (1927) he is disappointed that no - one has produced' a critical essay showing that stevenson is a writer of permanent importance, and why' .
volume; calvino’s preference for the revised version. calvino says ‘i consider this one of the best of stevenson’s short stories’ [ considero questo racconto uno dei più belli di stevenson ]. stevenson’s uncertainty about how to shape the story ‘is to a certain extent part of the quality of this game of hide - and - seek with oneself in this story of a childhood that one would like
director / producer jennifer fox has offered three new beautiful incentives to choose from, in order: chenrezig thangka (authenticated on the back by chogyal namkhai norbu), wrathful guardian thangka (authenticated on the back by chogyal namkhai norbu), and this museum quality painting of flying dakinis by esteemed artist and buddhist teacher dugu choegyal rinpoche to benefit the film' s completion costs. (see sidebar below for more information )
when i finally started making flying, i always thought she would be in the film─naturally she had to be! she was my muse! but when i brought out the camera i could see her discomfort─and when i tried to keep filming her she got really angry. she didn' t want her story on film; she wasn' t comfortable with how others would perceive her life because she was in her fifties and didn' t have kids. no amount of cajoling would change her mind. i had to put the camera away, but it changed our relationship, because as i pursued the film i had less and less time for her. the only woman i began to spend time with were the ones i was filming. it' s so ironic, don' t you think ?
at the end of his period as a schoolboy at eton (1917 - 21) had chosen a passage from stevenson at an annual public reading, but in his first novel burmese days (1934), the protagonist, mr. flory, ‘pays a visit to the house of an indian doctor, and discovers a “rather unappetising little library, books of essays, of the emerson - carlyle - stevenson type. ”
now is a crucial moment for tibet, as the last of the great non - monastic tibetan trained reincarnate teachers remain alive; if we don’t capture some of their true spiritual heritage now—more than just a few esoteric scenes, but a living tradition—it will be lost forever .
d. i. y. or die: how to survive as an independent artist is a low - budget documentary film released by music video distributors in 2002. the film is a
celebration of the underdog
and deals with why artists do what they do, regardless of the lack of a continuous paycheck .
at the time of his death film director robert altman was developing a feature film based on the documentary .
the notices written of him at his death will give a good idea of his standing at the time, e. g. in the illustrated london news dec. 22, 1894: 769: ‘he is gone, our prince of storytellers—such a prince, indeed, as his own florizel of bohemia, with the insatiable taste for weird adventure, for diablerie, for a strange mixture of metaphysics and romance’ .
there are those who think him a minor writer and those who see him as one of the great writers. i agree with the latter, because of the clean, light clarity of his style, but also because of the moral nucleus of all his narratives ]. (1 )
while looking for a producing partner that would inspire the language of the film she was planning, fox felt the documentary film work coming out of denmark was closest to her
aspirations for this new language i wanted to work in for flying .
so she partnered with a danish producer, easy film, and together funded the film through a grant from the danish film institute (similar to the national endowment for the arts in the us). as a danish co - production, the key personnel were required to be danish, including the editor .
this meant that the film was an artistic collaboration between an american and danish sensibility ,
says fox. she believes the project benefited tremendously from that fusion .
gustav deutsch' s film ist. a girl and a gun (2009), a narrative collage constructed using fragments from several european film archives, as well as the kinsey institute .
‘i have had one great pleasure. i have read stevenson. he is great: a storyteller, a thinker, a realist, a visionary, poet, philosopher, simple and complicated; he has the grip of a master when he begins and his hold never slackens. he is new, original, but of the type that could just as well have been born 300 years earlier or later .
because “flying” was such a wide open premise about the nature of modern female life around the world, i stole from the danish dogma tradition, the idea of making rules to contain the work and give it structure. my rules were very simple: 1. the camera must be passed at all times; 2. everyone in the room must agree to be on film or leave the room; 3. no tripods; 4. no lights; 5. no radio mics; mic on camera only; and 6. no additional camera people .
aparna mudi of zee news gave the film a rating of 2. 5 / 5 stars, concluding her review that
the unveiling of the visceral saga has a lot of strong characters and mohit has done a good job in adapting a foreign film and complimenting it with the drama that the indian audience is used to. but he has gone a tad over in making a thriller. maybe, filmmakers should step out of this trap more often and we wouldn 't be too far from making beacons of world cinema .
[ 29 ] rajeev masand of cnn - ibn stated that
i' m going with two - and - a - half out of five for' ek villain'. if you' re still wondering, the real villain here is the lousy script
. [ 30 ]
“a writer called mr. robert louis stevenson who makes the most delicate inlay - work in black and white, and files out to the fraction of a hair. ” oscar
48. fast, cheap, and out of control (errol morris, 1997). presents the profiles of four men with intense passion for their chosen careers: a robotics scientist, a mole - rat expert, a lion tamer, and a topiary artist. as he did in “first person” and “the fog of war, ” morris used the “interrortron” to film the interviews in the film .
) did not include a section devoted to stevenson (he was admitted to the eighth edition of 2006) .
44. fear of a black hat (rusty cundieff, 1994). a mockumentary on the evolution and state of american hip hop music in the spirit of this is spinal tap. rusty cundieff, the director and writer also was the lead actor (ice cold) .
as a storyteller there isn’t his equal; the same thing might almost be said of his essays. while the fascination of his other works is simply irresistible, to me, the most powerful of all is his
38. man bites dog (remy belvaux & benoit poelvoorde, 1992, french title: c’est arrivé près de chez vous). a mockumentary that takes a satirical look at how media promotes violence as a documentary crew follows a serial killer on his murderous activities .
direktorenhaus is a newly - renovated art and performance space
where a simulation of a temporary gesamtkunstwerk, the total artwork, is explored. traditional methods are coupled with analogue technology and digital media, presenting an experimental directive with social resonances, breaking down the boundaries between art and design .
it also happens to be located in a super sexy spot, housed in a big mansion that sits directly on the riverbank of the spree .
niederhoff, burkhard (2005). “robert louis stevenson’s arrival on the academic scene: a survey of recent studies” .
after the cacophony and chaos of a series of scenes of police brutality – the rioting young people are thrown on the cement, kicked, dragged into a van, truncheoned and bloodied and thrown in a dark cellar with no air to breathe – petru is brought to the major’s office for interrogation, the supposition that if he confesses, he will be sent home. gently stirring his tea ceremonially and speaking to the 22 - year - old in a soft “reasonable” voice, using the diminutive of petru' s name like a scolding papa, the major quickly begins to splutter and rage, intermittently commanding himself to stay calm. he cannot. he speaks with disdain at the privileged, ignorant boy before him. as he devolves into near parodic rage, things tip over into hysteria when he discovers that petru' s girlfriend is a puerto rican mulatta. when he interprets that to mean that moldavan women are not good enough for petru, and he has a woman also being held captive brought in for petru to rape, we quickly discern that the young man' s fate is irrevocably sealed.
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 . 
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.
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.