Jennifer Fox (documentary filmmaker)
Jennifer Fox | |
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Born | 1959 (age 64–65) Narberth, Pennsylvania, U.S. |
Occupations |
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Years active | 1980–present |
Spouse | Patrick Lindenmaier |
Website | A Luminous Mind Production |
Jennifer Fox (born 1959) is an American film producer, director, cinematographer, and writer as well as president of A Luminous Mind Film Productions.[1] She won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance for her first feature documentary, Beirut: The Last Home Movie.[2] Her 2010 documentary My Reincarnation had its premiere at the International Documentary Film Festival in Amsterdam (IDFA) in 2010, where it won a Top 20 Audience Award.[1]
Early life
Jennifer Fox was born into a Jewish family in 1959 in Narberth, Pennsylvania.[3] Her father, Richard J. Fox, was a U.S. Navy pilot who served in the Korean War and co-founded Fox Companies, a property construction firm in Pennsylvania and New Jersey.[4] Her mother, Geraldine Dietz Fox, after losing hearing in her left ear at the age of 27, helped to establish the National Institute on Deafness and other Communication Disorders (NIDCD) and founded the National Organization for Hearing Research Foundation (NOHR) in 1988.[3][5] One of five children, Fox attended primary school at the Quaker Germantown Friends School in Philadelphia.[6][7]
Fox knew she wanted to be a filmmaker from a young age after seeing the film Funny Girl, for an aunt's birthday.[8] In 1980 she graduated from Johns Hopkins University with a degree in Creative Writing, and in 1981 dropped out of New York University to film Beirut: The Last Home Movie.[1][9]
Career
In 1981, Fox left NYU to accompany her friend and classmate, Gaby Bustros, to her ancestral home in
Fox's next project, An American Love Story (1999), was inspired by her own experiences of racism towards interracial relationships. While dating a black man in the early '90s, her shock towards the racism from strangers and family inspired her to create the cinéma vérité documentary about Bill Sims' and Karen Wilson's interracial relationship. The 10-part series first aired on September 12, 1999 on PBS and ran for five consecutive nights.[9] Filming lasted over a year and a half, as Fox and one other crew member moved into the couple's Queen's apartment to chronicle their daily lives. Generating over 1,000 hours of film, the documentary covers everything from Bill's fluctuating career as a musician and Karen's declining health to the serious disapproval and ostracization the couple faced as they attempt to raise their family.[11] The film won a Gracie Award for best Television Series in 2000, and was named "One of the Top Ten Television Series of 1999" by The New York Times.[1]
Fox spent the next five years filming her third documentary
Fox's fourth documentary film My Reincarnation (2011) was filmed over the course of 20 years. After the struggle of filming and promoting Beirut: The Last Home Movie, Fox began travelling with
In 2018, Fox directed the film
Inspired by the filming of Flying: Confessions of a Free Woman, Fox started to recollect her dating life as a young girl, connecting it to the stories of rape and abuse suffered by the women she was interviewing.[19] However it wasn't until her mother found a story, titled The Tale, written by Fox in middle school depicting the relationship between her and her adult running coach, that Fox realized the relationship constituted sexual abuse. At just 13, she had seen the relationship as consensual, a mindset that wouldn't shift until re-reading the story as an adult.[6]
"What I was hearing [stories of sexual abuse] sounded so much like my own little private story that I called a relationship, there was this seismic crack in my body. Suddenly I realized what I protected in my mind as special and unique was not unique at all. It was the paradigm of sexual abuse."[19]
While writing the script, Fox developed the idea of "issue-based fiction," in which she is able to use storytelling to "dive into issues that people could learn from and experience."[8] Borrowing from her documentary filmmaking, Fox collaborated extensively on the production of the film, outreaching to mental health advocates, lawyers, sexual abuse survivors, and women's lived experiences to transform narrative into a tool for change.[8] Along with HBO, Fox was able to develop a resource website and viewing guides to accompany the film to be used in educating and opening up the conversation about childhood sexual abuse, the effects of trauma, and memory.[8]
The Tale was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance in 2018, the best international film at the
In March 2023, Fox named the running coach she said sexually abused her in 1973 as Ted Nash. Nash, a renowned Olympic medalist in rowing and Olympic rowing coach, had also coached girls and women in running. He had died in 2021.[20]
Jennifer Fox is also a teacher and educator. For the past 25 years she has held ongoing classes in New York City and hosts international masterclasses on producing, directing, screenwriting, and creating your own visual language. She is currently an Adjunct Professor at New York University.[citation needed]
Style and themes
Much of Fox's early work is shot in the style of cinéma vérité filmmaking and she is one of the main filmmakers featured within Peter Wintonick's documentary Cinéma Vérité: Defining the Moment. Her style, however, is different from pure vérité as she notably includes interviews with her subjects in an attempt to reveal more of their character and psychology.[21] Paired with her handheld, observational style, the combination of interview and vérité creates films that attempt to depict both the exterior and interior of their characters.[22]
Much of Fox's work deals with understanding trauma. In films like The Tale and Flying: Confessions of a Free Woman, trauma is examined in relation to memory and womanhood. In both films Fox is interested in how past trauma is able to shape one's life and memory, using personal stories as a way to examine its effects. She also explores the process of ongoing trauma in films like Beirut: the Last Home Movie and An American Love Story. Fox often uses documentary films to observe the effects of trauma on present-day life by focusing on not only what her subjects do but why they do them.
Personal life
Fox is married to Swiss cinematographer Patrick Lindenmaier.[7]
Awards and honors
Fox's first film Beirut: The Last Home Movie won the Grand Prize for Best Documentary film and the prize for Best Cinematography at the 1988 Sundance Film Festival. It also won Le Premier Prix for Best Documentary at the 1988
Filmography
Year | Film | Credited as | |||
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Director | Writer | Producer | Cinematographer | ||
1987 | Beirut: The Last Home Movie | Yes | Yes | ||
1999 | An American Love Story | Yes | Yes | Yes | |
1999 | On the Ropes | Yes | |||
2002 | Love and Diane | Yes | |||
2004 | Mix | Yes | |||
2006 | Looking for Busi | Yes | Yes | ||
2006 | Flying: Confessions of a Free Woman | Yes | Yes | ||
2007 | Absolutely Safe | Yes | |||
2010 | Upstate | Yes | |||
2010 | My Reincarnation | Yes | Yes | Yes | |
2011 | Maori Boy Genius | Yes | |||
2011 | Cat Scratch Fever | Yes | |||
2014 | She's Lost Control | Yes | |||
2015 | Daddy Don't Go | Yes | |||
2017 | The Pathological Optimist | Yes | |||
2018 | The Tale | Yes | Yes | Yes | |
2018 | The Rest I Make Up | Yes |
References
- ^ a b c d "About Us | A Luminous Mind Production". aluminousmindproduction.com. Retrieved November 14, 2018.
- ^ "Jennifer Fox : Awards". IMDb.com. Retrieved April 21, 2016.
- ^ a b Gray, Ellen (May 18, 2018). "In HBO's 'The Tale,' Narberth's Jennifer Fox turns to fiction to tell her own tough, true story". philly.com. Retrieved November 14, 2018.
- ^ "Richard J. Fox". New Horizon Council. Archived from the original on November 14, 2018. Retrieved November 14, 2018.
- ^ "Geraldine Dietz Fox, Patient Advocate". NIDCD. October 25, 2018. Retrieved November 14, 2018.
- ^ a b c Kaufman, Amy (January 25, 2018). "Jennifer Fox's drama 'The Tale' brings #MeToo to Sundance". Los Angeles Times. Los Angeles, California. Retrieved November 14, 2018.
- ^ a b Squires, Bonnie. "VILLAGE VIEW: HBO airs Jennifer Fox's powerful film". Main Line Media News. Retrieved November 14, 2018.
- ^ a b c d Fox, Jennifer (May 26, 2018). "How My Struggle As A Survivor Of Sexual Abuse Became 'The Tale', A Movie I Hope Will Change The World – Guest Column". Deadline. Retrieved November 14, 2018.
- ^ a b c d Pefferman, Naomi (September 9, 1999). "jennifer fox Archives — Jewish Journal". Jewish Journal. Retrieved November 14, 2018.
- ^ "Jennifer Fox". IMDb. Retrieved November 14, 2018.
- ^ "'An American Love Story': A Successful but Unorthodox Marriage". archive.nytimes.com. Retrieved November 14, 2018.
- ^ a b Anderson, John (July 2007). "Jennifer Fox - Flying: Confessions of a Free Woman - Film". The New York Times. Retrieved November 14, 2018.
- ^ a b Bussel, Rachel Kramer (July 13, 2007). "My Interview With Documentary Filmmaker Jennifer Fox". Huffington Post. Retrieved November 14, 2018.
- ^ Phillips, Sarah (August 7, 2007). "Jennifer Fox's Flying: Confessions of a Free Woman". The Guardian. Retrieved November 14, 2018.
- ^ Williams, Zoe (August 7, 2007). "My life on film". The Guardian. Retrieved November 14, 2018.
- ^ a b "Jennifer Fox's 20-year "Reincarnation"". Retrieved November 14, 2018.
- ^ Gold, Daniel M. (October 27, 2011). "'My Reincarnation,' a Documentary by Jennifer Fox — Review". The New York Times. Retrieved November 14, 2018.
- ^ "MY REINCARNATION". Kickstarter. Retrieved November 14, 2018.
- ^ a b "It took Jennifer Fox 35 years to be ready to make "The Tale," an intimate portrait of abuse". Salon. May 25, 2018. Retrieved November 14, 2018.
- ^ Macur, Juliet (March 20, 2023). "For Years She Said a Coach Abused Her. Now She Has Named a Legend". The New York Times. Retrieved March 20, 2023.
- ^ Canada, National Film Board of, Cinéma Vérité: Defining the Moment, retrieved November 14, 2018
- ^ "Family Drama". Retrieved November 14, 2018.
Further reading
- Cinéma Vérité: Defining the Moment (dir. Peter Wintonick, 1999)
- The Heck With Hollywood! (dir. Doug Block,1992)
- Capturing Reality (dir. Pepita Ferrari, 2008)