Orlando: My Political Biography
Orlando: My Political Biography is a curious text, sitting awkwardly between a modern re-working and an essayistic contemplation on Virignia Woolfe’s 1928 novel, Orlando: A Biography. A milestone in the pantheon of transgender literary history, Woolfe’s fantastical, satirical odyssey through time and gender follows a poet who suddenly and inexplicably changes sex and survives the centuries.
Paul B Preciado’s film navigates Woolfe’s novel through a distinctly modern lens and invites 26 trans and non-binary contributors to offer their interpretations of Orlando, woven amongst their own disparate experiences and identities. These biographical contributions are themselves woven into vignettes which playfully reenact segments of Woolfe’s story with a kind of Brechtian detachment, with the players often working through their very modern experiences in full Elizabethan garb in the midst of sets which feel stylistically half-built, breaking the barriers between centuries and weakening the one between the text and the audience.
Preciado’s background as a philosopher and academic has not, until now, included contributions to cinema, which may go some way to explaining why his first foray into filmmaking produces a product, which feels tailored to a scholastic viewer rather than an instinctual one. The spirited experiment with form never truly blossoms into dramatic or aesthetic life, and often lulls into a natural state of repetition.
Matthew McMillan
Orlando: My Political Biography is released in select cinemas on 5th July 2024.
Watch the trailer for Orlando: My Political Biography here:
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