Sexy, witty and provocative, Potter’s adaptation of Orlando turned Virginia Woolf’s most spirited novel, called ‘the longest love letter in English literature’, into a reinvention of heritage cinema that dazzled audiences and critics from the Venice Film Festival to Rolling Stone. Tilda Swinton’s feted performance as Orlando, the time-travelling, genderswitching hero/ine, became a touchstone for a new era of cinematic and political sexual and gender liberation. —BFI
Sally Potter (b. 19 September 1949 in London) is an English film director and screenwriter.
Having left school at sixteen to become a filmmaker, Sally Potter joined the London Film-Makers’ Co-op and started making experimental short films. She later trained as a dancer and choreographer at the London School of Contemporary Dance, before founding Limited Dance Company with Jacky Lansley.
Potter went on to become an award winning performance artist and theatre director, with shows including MOUNTING, DEATH AND THE MAIDEN and BERLIN. In addition, she was a member of several music bands (including FIG and The Film Music Orchestra) working as a lyricist and singer. She collaborated (as a singer-songwriter) with composer Lindsay Cooper on the song cycle OH MOSCOW which was performed throughout Europe, Russia and North America. Her music work continued later when she co-composed with David Motion the soundtrack to ORLANDO, and produced the score for THE TANGO LESSON. Her most… read more
I'm really bored of feminism in general, and yet I love this film. I don't know why, I just find it very enjoyable.
S - Then you know as good as I how good it is to travel, like a free-spirit, unfeathered by position or possession. O - Unfeathered... Are you an adventurer by profession? S - My profession, you can call it that, is the pursuit of liberty, like the bright shade of some imortal dream which walks when temper sleeps. O - The wave of life stalks dreams.
Also: ATG #89. LAT previews 2012. Tilda Swinton on Virginia Woolf and more.
"Daring the discomfited viewer to laugh at shame and suffering, and then wonder why we're laughing, Todd Solondz is back," announces J Hoberman
Sally Potter's Orlando (1992), digitally restored in high definition, is being re-released this summer and sees its premiere today as part
What I love about this new poster for Luca Guadagnino’s I Am Love (Io sono l'amore) is not just its gorgeous typography, but also how it celebrates
"In every sense, I Am Love is a stunning achievement," declares Jay Weissberg in Variety (where Nick Vivarelli reports on the press
Sally Potter’s inventive, vibrant and visually sumptuous adaptation of Virginia Woolf’s 1928 novel is the ideal vehicle for Tilda’s exquisite versitility as metrosexual maverick poet Orlando. If you… read review
I rented this film because of Tilda Swinton’s involvement. Well fortunately, I ended up getting one hell of a great film as well.
Sally Potter and her cast and crew captured me with this wonderful… read review