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On the one hand, why am I picking on small, independently-produced labors of love, almost all of which I insist on seeing either in the theater or the day they come out on Netflix? On the other, the personal journey/memoir documentary format is in dire need of reinvention. Whether it’s Adrien Grenier looking for his birth father, some guy trying to get a date with Drew Barrymore, or Morgan Spurlock doing anything, they’re all the same, from the intense navel-gazing “plots,” to the inflection and exact wording of the “I was always different and special, so I decided to go on a journey to find out what’s in my belly button” opening narration. I’m not saying that there aren’t great examples from this genre (Just Melvin, Just Evil is one), but why so many of these movies are exactly alike? Is it because the wrong people are finding themselves with a lot of money lying around and nothing else to do but make a documentary about, literally, Googling themselves? Is the world really begging to follow another upper middle class urbanite on a journey of self-discovery?
Via Very Short List, a new documentary series called Flying: Confessions Of A Free Woman will begin airing on The Sundance Channel on Monday night.
Flying: Confessions of a Free Woman (on the Sundance Channel beginning 5/5) is a six-hour DIY miniseries that mixes Fox’s own up-front video diary (she’s often literally naked, struggling with the choice between two lovers) with the enlightening onscreen confessions she elicits from women in 17 countries.
I feel a little shitty complaining about this one when there are clearly bigger fish to fry, and the parts of the series exploring women in other countries have the potential to be enlightening if (and only if) filmmaker/subject Jennifer Fox manages to focus on them and not herself, which seems unlikely from this trailer:
Even after getting past the irksome narration, why couldn’t someone have explored these worthy topics from the perspective of a curious outsider? I’ll be tuning in Monday night in hopes that the trailer is misleading, but if we can learn anything from successful documentaries, it’s that Errol Morris will never make an entire movie as an excuse to show his sex tapes.
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I completely agree! I once wrote a Creative Capital Grant about a film, I mean a journey, I wanted to make addressing such a reinvention and it was turned down as I believe it was completely misunderstood without a grain of salt as yet another self googling/naval gazer rather than taking a piss out of this earnest genre of films that have their day numbered in the age of vlogggzzz- OR am i just a misunderstood artist that is frustrated with the fear of sincere expression. I actually believe it’s just that i am a horrible grant writer and wish I could have stated my case as succintly and with as much humor as your post. I think this is the 1st call for 2nd person Cinema from the 3rd world- or is that what we will look forard to in the future- Video Responses from developing nations in the distant future discovering the video cave paintings laid down by web 2.0? either way, you are correct- DOWN WITH FIRST PERSON DOCUMENTARIES!
Documentaries are for enlightening people not making them want to shoot themselves or the documentarian for whining, posing pointless questions or wasting everyones time in general. This frustrates me personally as someone who’s tried to/trying to enter that field not through first-person crap like wanting to take Drew Barrymore on a date. Fuck that.
A friend of mine brought me to a screening of “Flying:Confessions of A Free Woman” last summer at the Film Forum. It was six (SIX!) hours straight and afterwards there was a Q&A with Jennifer Fox. It was an interesting discussion about modern-day female sexuality, but got real awkward when she started forcing male members of the audience to defend the ineptitude of the male species. I was the only one there under 30 and she did a pretty good job of making me ashamed of my youth… and penis. Hopefully it does well on Sundance =\