" ☆ ☆ ☆ 1/2 (3.5 out of 4 Stars!) Highly Recommended! Not once over the course of six hours does the film seem self-indulgent: Fox's soul-baring honesty feels both profound and universal."
—M. Johanson
Video Librarian (March - April 2008)
"What is interesting about the film is the cross-cultural perspective gained through the many interviews with women in other countries. The educational excerpts (one of two additional DVDs) are... the most useful, as they condense hours of the documentary into themed segments. Fox is to be commended for her candor and for the unique technique of "passing the camera," which lends itself well to capturing the feel of personal conversations among female friends."
—Mary Laskowski, Univ. of Illinois Lib., Urbana
Library Journal (April 2008)
"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 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. 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."
—Ciara Healy, Media Services Librarian, Wake Technical Community College
Educational Media Reviews Online (February 19, 2008)
"You could happily talk for days about Fox's Flying: storytelling, filmmaking, genre, globalism, feminism, sexuality, family, repression, aging, love... I'm breathless. What a rich film! An elegant, engaging demonstration, in both form and content, of how the personal is political."
—Lydia Foerster, Advocacy Video
The New School
"In the age of reality TV, this documentary series merges the personal documentary with cultural criticism. Not only is the self reflection fascinating in terms of filmmaking, but Jennifer Fox confronts issues haunting women for decades here and abroad."
—Marsha Rock, Director of Broadcast Journalism
New York University
"Remarkable about FLYING is the way it deconstructs that 'voice of authority' so often associated with knowledge production in documentary narratives. The film gains its credibility and earns our trust on another level altogether: through the filmmaker as protagonist whose strength lies precisely in her vulnerability, and who occupies a place along the biological timeline where the difficult choices facing many women too often remain unspoken. She has brought dignity, humor, and tremendous love to these questions, both the existential and the squarely pragmatic, and her scope of address is uncommonly wide, reaching men and woman alike, across social classes and national cultures."
—Angelica Fenner, Cinema Studies Institute
University of Toronto
"The idea of viewing six hours of anyone's rampage throughout the world of female sexual mores, encounters and life-choice consequences seemed daunting at best. That was before I viewed, FLYING: CONFESSIONS OF A FREE WOMAN, Jennifer Fox's riveting docufemalentary. Once I hit "play" on the DVD I was her captive until the film ended and I realized, without ever meeting her in person, Jennifer and I had become friends."
—Su Bedell, Adjunct Professor, Women's Studies & Communication Departments
William Paterson University
"Beautifully and intimately shot, Jennifer Fox once again pushes the boundaries of documentary in her new series."
—Alice Elliott, Kanbar Institute, Tisch School of the Arts
New York University
"Deeply engaging, FLYING explores one woman's efforts to negotiate autonomy and happiness, professional success and love, in New York City and around the world... With the help of family, friends, lovers, and strangers, Fox gets to the heart of 21st-century feminism, and it's well worth hanging on to her coattails for the ride."
—Juliet Koss, Department of Art History
Scripps College
"In FLYING: CONFESSIONS OF A FREE WOMAN, Jennifer Fox has used her individual life as a New York professional woman as a frame to enter the worlds of several communities of woman across the world. The film explores issues of women living under male dominance, including sexuality--rape, prostitution, forced marriage, pregnancy, childbirth, infertility, female genital mutilation and masturbation. It also presents women--in the US and elsewhere--struggling to create new alternatives for family life and for work. The range of women's lives is enormous--from a "free" Western style to traditional closed communities. The values underlying the differences are explored using Jennifer Fox's exceptional creative gifts."
—Alice H. Deakins, PhD, Professor of English and Women's Studies
William Paterson University