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Seeking Happily Ever After, Ever After! December 8, 2013

Posted by Onely in film review, Great Onely Activities, Honorary Onely Awards, Reviews, Some Like It Single.
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Copious Readers, several months ago Onely was excited to view and review the independent pro-single-women film Seeking Happily Ever After.  Now it’s more widely available on DISTRIFY, where anyone in an English-speaking country (for now) can rent it from their own computer. (Distribution in non-English-speaking countries has not been implemented yet due to the cost of subtitling.)
Producer Michelle Cove provides some statistics that drive home the need–or rather, the market–for pro-singles films such as Seeking Happily Ever After:

• The number of single women has more than doubled over the past three decades. –2011 General Lifestyle Survey Overview from the Office for National Statistics
• In England, Germany, the Netherlands and the United States, approximately one in five women in their late 40s remaining childless. –Yale Global Online, 2012
• In Australia, almost 1/3 women aged 30 to 34 do not have a partner.–Census statistics
• 62% of U.S. residents 18 and older have never been married. –U.S. Census, 2011
• In Scandinavia, the majority of mothers in all social classes are unmarried.—Sociologist and leading researcher on men and masculinity
• In Spain, 92% of women do not censure the fact that they have had a child without a partner.—NSI (National Statistics Institute)

Buoyed by the success of Happily Ever After, we at Onely hope that one day someone will make a film about single men. Granted, women are more immersed in the White Dress Marriage Myth and hence the greater need for a film such as SHEA. But a positive film about unmarried men would be interesting too. Any takers?
–Christina

Film Review: Seeking Happily Ever After November 9, 2010

Posted by Onely in film review, Singles Resource, We like. . ..
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Seeking Happily Ever After: One Generation’s Struggle to Redefine the Fairy Tale.  Directed and Produced by Michelle Cove; Produced by Kerry David. 2010.

“I keep seeing parts of the movie in my head,” said my friend Monica at dinner, after we saw Seeking Happily Ever After at its DC screening. This is usually the sign of either a very inspiring movie, or a very disturbing one. Seeking Happily Ever After deftly manages to be both.  I hope our Copious Readers get a chance to check it out. If you don’t live near a screening, maybe you can arrange one in your area.

For the award-winning documentary, director Michelle Cove and producer Kerry David didn’t so much “interview” various single women (mostly heterosexual, but including at least two lesbians) as she let them talk–if and why they like their single lives, what “happily ever after” means to them, what their pasts were like and what their hopes are now.  My favorite was the thirty-something woman who said she could imagine herself being perfectly happy as an older single woman with white hair down to her butt, turquoise jewelery, and a bunch of cats milling around at her feet as she sipped a martini with girlfriends (I may be combining one or more interviews, but you get the idea).  The film is full of such gems.

But, like life, it’s also full of nails-on-chalkboard moments of awkwardness and horror. Cove and David don’t whitewash the world of single women. (more…)

Still Seeking Happily Ever After June 26, 2009

Posted by Onely in film review, Reviews, Singles Resource, We like. . ..
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imagesIn the early days of Onely, we briefly mentioned the groundbreaking film Seeking Happily Ever After , which director Michelle Cove describes in an email as, “a feature-length documentary about why there are more single 30-something women than ever in the US and whether women are redefining happily ever after”. Of course our Copious Readership already knows the answers to those questions! But it’s great to see a film giving voice to single women, and especially gratifying to hear that the film was the top-rated trailer at Sundance. And check out the pedigrees of the singles experts who contributed to the effort.  

Because all our single readers are also experts in the field, you should tell your own stories to Michelle as she assembles data for the film’s companion book, a “feel-great guide to living your own happily ever after.” Just fill out this survey, “Three Questions, Three Minutes“, designed for single (not married) women over 26. Here’s what the filmmakers learned during their project and what (I assume) will be reflected in the book: (more…)

Heads Up! Documentary about Being Happy *and* Being Single in the Works… July 24, 2008

Posted by Onely in Food for Thought, We like. . ..
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Feministing, one of the sites that Christina and I love and read daily, just posted today about a new documentary in the works, called Seeking Happily Ever After, which has as its subject — gasp — being happy and being single. Cool! Check out this link to read the post and to watch the trailer.

Also? A few more books that look worth reading are mentioned in the trailer, including Leslie Talbot’s Singular Existence and Jerusha Stewart’s A Single Girl’s Manifesta. I imagine you’ll be hearing more about these books here once we get our hands on them, but if any of you happen to have any info/thoughts/reactions about these books or others, we’d love to know!

– L

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