FLYING Episode Descriptions: In six hour long episodes, acclaimed filmmaker, Jennifer Fox, 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. Filmed over five years, Jennifer travels to over seventeen countries in search of what it means to be a free woman. Employing groundbreaking camera techniques, the series creates a new type of documentary language and storytelling that mirrors the special way women communicate.
Chapter One: NO FEAR OF FLYINGLiving the Free Life…
USA (NYC, Wyoming), Lapland, South Africa (Capetown)
Meet Jennifer and her female friends, all in different predicaments: L’dawn is going through a seven-year divorce; Mindy is broken up with her rock-star boyfriend (although they still have sex); and Pat Cisarano, a blues singer, 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”. She has a secret married lover in South Africa but decides to take a new boyfriend – Patrick, a Swiss man. What is this strange modern life all are living?
Chapter Two: TEST PILOTINGTICK TOCK The Biological Clock… The Single Woman
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…
Chapter Three: EXPERIENCING TURBULANCEThe Price of Sexual Freedom
USA (NYC, Mass, San Fran, Phila), India (Bombay, Calcutta, Nagpur)
Jennifer returns home to a shocking message: her lover’s wife has found out about her affair. Her friends weigh in on the morality of relationships with married men. Meanwhile, Jen must pull herself together: Patrick is arriving for a vacation. Later in New York, she meets Paromita, a community organizer from India, who invites her to visit. She flies to Indian, where Paromita leads Jen on a surprising, sometime hilarious, exploration of sexual rules in Indian culture, making Jen reflect on her own “free” values…
Chapter Four: CRASH AND BURNThe things all women share…
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 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…
Chapter Five: WALKING AWAY FROM THE WRECKThe secret of male power…
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 FGM. When she returns to Africa, she discovers something about her Lover she never saw before…
Chapter Six: BREAKING THE SOUND BARRIERFemale Life Backwards: New Technology for the “new woman”
USA (NYC, Massachusetts, Philadelphia, Wyoming, Florida)
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. As her mother, aunt and her gather around her dying grandmother, Jen begins to see the three women who raised her differently – and the result changes her life forever…
At the series end, all the main characters are revisited in an epilogue with some surprising twists.
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