Description
Book SynopsisA film that transcends time, Sally Potter’s Orlando (1992) follows its titular character through nearly four hundred years of British history. Orlando starts life as a young man in the 1600s and then, mid-film, becomes a woman in the 1800s. Russell Sheaffer meticulously charts the distinct shift from lesbian feminist text to queer film classic.
Trade Review“An original and timely reading of Sally Potter’s 1992 film. I was utterly captivated by Sheaffer’s reading of the ways in which the cinematic language and visual grammar of Potter’s film take up the call of Woolf’s ‘common sentence,’ with the film’s oscillating point of view, invitation to the audience through its use of direct address, and collaborative sharing of the filmic gaze suggesting ways in which women can queerly both originate and inherit each other’s stories. This culminates in a rich concluding discussion of the film’s final scene, when Orlando’s daughter turns the camera on her mother.” Peter Dickinson, author of My Vancouver Dance History: Story, Movement, Community
