March 21st: ORLANDO (Sally Potter, 1992)
NOTE: This film will be projected in the high-definition Blu-ray format.
The adventures of a British writer who lives from the Elizabethan era of the 1600s all the way to the 20th century, rubbing shoulders with royalty and notable literary figures, changing genders along the way.
Director Sally Potter began making short films as a teenager, then had detours with a prominent dance company, theatre company, and as a songwriter and performer. Moving back to film, her first feature The Gold Diggers starred Oscar-winner Julie Christie, and she worked on a number of shorts and documentaries throughout the 1980s.
Virginia Woolf's satirical novel Orlando: A Biography is a much-celebrated work of the writer's career, both for its humorous survey of English literature as well as its meditation on gender roles. Potter first pitched an adaptation of the book in 1984, and was unable to secure funding. The script would not be written until 1988 and the process of finding investors and economical shooting locations took four more years.
Potter's adaptation makes a fair number of changes but preserves its spirit, and retains its epic chronological scope, pushing it even further from Woolf's conclusion in 1928 to her own present-day 1992. One of the novel's devices featured occasional addresses to the reader, and Potter emulates this with the title character speaking directly to the camera.
The crew included a team of Dutch production designers in Ben Van Os and Jan Roelfs, who with Potter surveyed various locations in Russia with the intention to shoot most of the film there to keep costs down (taking advantage of recent post-Soviet friendliness to the West). Shoots occurred in St. Petersburg, a rural mansion designed in the style of a British country manor, and subbing in for mid-1600s Istanbul was Khiva, a medieval town in Uzbekistan.
The cast is headed by Tilda Swinton, seen by Potter in a stage play, but who had already appeared in several films by British avant-garde director Derek Jarman. She was brought on-board early while Potter was still working on the script. Also starring are Billy Zane (Titanic), Scottish pop singer Jimmy Somerville of the band Bronski Beat, stage and screen veteran John Wood, Simon Russell Beale, Toby Stephens, and cultural provocateur Quentin Crisp as Queen Elizabeth.
Orlando premiered at the Venice Film Festival, where it won the audience award and critics prizes for Best Film. It received Oscar nominations for its production design as well as costume design by Sandy Powell (Gangs of New York). The film garnered mostly positive reviews, and broke both Swinton and Potter to the international arthouse scene. A series of retrospective events in London celebrated the film's 25th anniversary in 2017, particularly for its significance in Queer Cinema history.
Running time is approx. 90 minutes.
The adventures of a British writer who lives from the Elizabethan era of the 1600s all the way to the 20th century, rubbing shoulders with royalty and notable literary figures, changing genders along the way.
Director Sally Potter began making short films as a teenager, then had detours with a prominent dance company, theatre company, and as a songwriter and performer. Moving back to film, her first feature The Gold Diggers starred Oscar-winner Julie Christie, and she worked on a number of shorts and documentaries throughout the 1980s.
Virginia Woolf's satirical novel Orlando: A Biography is a much-celebrated work of the writer's career, both for its humorous survey of English literature as well as its meditation on gender roles. Potter first pitched an adaptation of the book in 1984, and was unable to secure funding. The script would not be written until 1988 and the process of finding investors and economical shooting locations took four more years.
Potter's adaptation makes a fair number of changes but preserves its spirit, and retains its epic chronological scope, pushing it even further from Woolf's conclusion in 1928 to her own present-day 1992. One of the novel's devices featured occasional addresses to the reader, and Potter emulates this with the title character speaking directly to the camera.
The crew included a team of Dutch production designers in Ben Van Os and Jan Roelfs, who with Potter surveyed various locations in Russia with the intention to shoot most of the film there to keep costs down (taking advantage of recent post-Soviet friendliness to the West). Shoots occurred in St. Petersburg, a rural mansion designed in the style of a British country manor, and subbing in for mid-1600s Istanbul was Khiva, a medieval town in Uzbekistan.
The cast is headed by Tilda Swinton, seen by Potter in a stage play, but who had already appeared in several films by British avant-garde director Derek Jarman. She was brought on-board early while Potter was still working on the script. Also starring are Billy Zane (Titanic), Scottish pop singer Jimmy Somerville of the band Bronski Beat, stage and screen veteran John Wood, Simon Russell Beale, Toby Stephens, and cultural provocateur Quentin Crisp as Queen Elizabeth.
Orlando premiered at the Venice Film Festival, where it won the audience award and critics prizes for Best Film. It received Oscar nominations for its production design as well as costume design by Sandy Powell (Gangs of New York). The film garnered mostly positive reviews, and broke both Swinton and Potter to the international arthouse scene. A series of retrospective events in London celebrated the film's 25th anniversary in 2017, particularly for its significance in Queer Cinema history.
Running time is approx. 90 minutes.
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