Filmmaker Paul B Preciado doesn’t need to write down his story, he tells us at the start of this experimental docudrama, because Virginia Woolf has already done that. The claiming of Woolf’s text by numerous trans, non-binary and genderqueer people reflects the power of a narrative which the author herself explored in spite of social restraints and linguistic limitations, but it also reflects something else that is perhaps not obvious to cis people watching the film, and that’s the fact that many trans lives past and present have been expressed only through fiction because it is so difficult to exist in the real world.
Capturing the experience of living in a world where one’s gender doesn’t fit better than almost any other film to date, Preciado’s work is all about claiming space and present day narrative. It makes no apologies and no effort to cater to cis viewers; rather,...
Capturing the experience of living in a world where one’s gender doesn’t fit better than almost any other film to date, Preciado’s work is all about claiming space and present day narrative. It makes no apologies and no effort to cater to cis viewers; rather,...
- 4/18/2024
- by Jennie Kermode
- eyeforfilm.co.uk
If you came of age during the height of computer typing programs, the name Mavis Beacon will conjure the image of a pixelated Black woman with a honeyed voice. You might remember her introduction, delivered in a dulcet tone: “Welcome to typing class, I’m your teacher Mavis Beacon.” She was an encouraging presence in the ’80s, reminding you that, with Mavis on your side, you could do anything — especially learn to type.
But who was Mavis Beacon? Is the person who helped acclimate generations to a requirement of the computer age real? In Seeking Mavis Beacon, a frenzied and enlightening documentary, filmmaker Jazmin Jones embarks on a Searching for Sugarman-style quest to find the actual Mavis Beacon. She’s joined by her associate producer and friend, Olivia McKayla Ross, a young woman whose shifting relationship to the internet becomes a key plot point. Together, Jones and Ross dig into web archives,...
But who was Mavis Beacon? Is the person who helped acclimate generations to a requirement of the computer age real? In Seeking Mavis Beacon, a frenzied and enlightening documentary, filmmaker Jazmin Jones embarks on a Searching for Sugarman-style quest to find the actual Mavis Beacon. She’s joined by her associate producer and friend, Olivia McKayla Ross, a young woman whose shifting relationship to the internet becomes a key plot point. Together, Jones and Ross dig into web archives,...
- 1/23/2024
- by Lovia Gyarkye
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Paul B. Preciado comes from the world of philosophy, not filmmaking. When he was approached by a studio about creating a biography of his life — from his work on identity and art to his own “slow transition” — it was merely as the subject of a potential film. Preciado instinctively knew his story wasn’t just the things that had happened to him or the work he’d done. His story is “Orlando,” by Virginia Woolf, both the ideas present in the 1928 novel and what the experience of reading it has done for young queer people. In “Orlando, My Political Biography” Preciado tells the story of the novel while reflecting on the lived experience of trans and genderfluid folks from the mid-20th century to the present day. But he doesn’t do that alone, either.
The film begins with Preciado searching for collaborators, putting up posters all over Paris that ask,...
The film begins with Preciado searching for collaborators, putting up posters all over Paris that ask,...
- 11/29/2023
- by Sarah Shachat
- Indiewire
Virginia Woolf‘s “Orlando: A Biography” is a centuries-spanning tale of a nobleman who, after a slumber that runs through several nights, metamorphoses into a woman. Inspired by and dedicated to Woolf’s lover, Vita Sackville-West, the classic 1928 novel has long been fodder for feminist and queer readings. The florid tale of a nobleman-cum-woman who fluidly plays with gender and sexuality, is as totemic a text as one can find to illustrate the timely and timeless journeys trans and gender-noncomforning folks have been making for decades (if not centuries). That is precisely what trans filmmaker Paul B. Preciado has done with his brilliant docu-manifesto, “Orlando, My Political Biography.”
Preciado understands how powerful a tale “Orlando: A Biography” remains close to a century since it was first published. With his hybrid documentary, Preciado seeks out to cannibalize Woolf’s text. With voiceover musings and staged narrative vignettes, he ingests Woolf’s text and regurgitates it.
Preciado understands how powerful a tale “Orlando: A Biography” remains close to a century since it was first published. With his hybrid documentary, Preciado seeks out to cannibalize Woolf’s text. With voiceover musings and staged narrative vignettes, he ingests Woolf’s text and regurgitates it.
- 11/17/2023
- by Manuel Betancourt
- Variety Film + TV
A24 continues its stream of special runs opening dark comedy Dream Scenario in limited release on six screens in New York and LA. Written and directed by Kristoffer Borgli (Sick Of Myself) and produced by Ari Aster, it stars Nicolas Cage as a hapless family man whose life is turned upside down when millions of strangers suddenly start seeing him in their dreams.
The film premiered at Toronto Film Festival to stellar reviews (see Deadline’s here). A24 had a SAG-AFTRA waiver and Cage began promoting the film at TIFF. The English-language debut for Norwegian helmer Borgli — whose satire Sick Of Myself premiered at Cannes last year — also features Julianne Nicholson, Michael Cera, Kate Berlant, Nicholas Braun and Noah Centineo.
Opens NY at AMC Lincoln Square, Angelika, Alamo, In LA at The Grove, Century City, Burbank. Q&As with filmmaker Borgli and cast members Berlant (who plays an executive...
The film premiered at Toronto Film Festival to stellar reviews (see Deadline’s here). A24 had a SAG-AFTRA waiver and Cage began promoting the film at TIFF. The English-language debut for Norwegian helmer Borgli — whose satire Sick Of Myself premiered at Cannes last year — also features Julianne Nicholson, Michael Cera, Kate Berlant, Nicholas Braun and Noah Centineo.
Opens NY at AMC Lincoln Square, Angelika, Alamo, In LA at The Grove, Century City, Burbank. Q&As with filmmaker Borgli and cast members Berlant (who plays an executive...
- 11/10/2023
- by Jill Goldsmith
- Deadline Film + TV
A documentary about the shaping of trans identity in the shadow of patriarchal society from a first-time filmmaker who was once mentored by philosopher Jacques Derrida sounds, on paper, like homework. But trans writer-turned-director Paul B. Preciado’s “Orlando, My Political Biography” is hardly so, instead revealing itself as a playful and joyous ode to how transness calls out the social order’s inherent fictions, binaries, and normativities — and it’s also a loving paean to the prose of Virginia Woolf.
The great British writer’s “Orlando: A Biography,” about a noble who changes genders in their sleep across a 300-year lifespan, already inspired a great Sally Potter film, 1992’s “Orlando” starring Tilda Swinton. But Preciado’s film essay, populated by a colorful cast of sparky trans characters worthy of a Pedro Almodóvar fresco, is a fitting heir to “Orlando’s” literary and cinematic bona fides, both an embrace for...
The great British writer’s “Orlando: A Biography,” about a noble who changes genders in their sleep across a 300-year lifespan, already inspired a great Sally Potter film, 1992’s “Orlando” starring Tilda Swinton. But Preciado’s film essay, populated by a colorful cast of sparky trans characters worthy of a Pedro Almodóvar fresco, is a fitting heir to “Orlando’s” literary and cinematic bona fides, both an embrace for...
- 11/10/2023
- by Ryan Lattanzio
- Indiewire
For Orlando, My Political Biography, the term “festival darling” is an understatement. This experimental take on trans history, storytelling, and filmmaking itself has screened and won awards all over the globe, including Berlin’s Teddy Award for Best Documentary Feature. What started as a joke––almost a dare––is now one of writer and academic Paul B. Preciado’s best-known works.
The film uses a collective of trans and nonbinary people to reexamine Orlando by Virginia Woolf, therefore situating the modern trans experience in a classic tale of genderbending. Through stunning visuals, earnest performances, and at least one musical number, Preciado hopes to show Woolf and his viewers that Orlando was never really a work of fiction. Today, he argues, there are more out and proud Orlandos than ever before, though they face significant medical and judicial prejudice.
I spoke to Preciado just hours before his New York Film Festival debut.
The film uses a collective of trans and nonbinary people to reexamine Orlando by Virginia Woolf, therefore situating the modern trans experience in a classic tale of genderbending. Through stunning visuals, earnest performances, and at least one musical number, Preciado hopes to show Woolf and his viewers that Orlando was never really a work of fiction. Today, he argues, there are more out and proud Orlandos than ever before, though they face significant medical and judicial prejudice.
I spoke to Preciado just hours before his New York Film Festival debut.
- 11/7/2023
- by Lena Wilson
- The Film Stage
As we enter the final months of the year, we’ll soon be unveiling our favorite cinema in a variety of distinctions and categories, leading up to our best films of the year list. In the meantime, it’s time to play catch up. Along with our updated lists of the best films playing in theaters and weekly streaming picks, we’re taking a look at the offerings of November: historical epics, riveting documentaries, impressive debuts, and the return of one of the most imaginative filmmakers to ever contribute to the craft.
15. Dream Scenario (Kristoffer Borgli; Nov. 10 limited)
In a rare feat, Kristoffer Borgli premiered his second U.S. release of the year after the jet-black Norwegian comedy Sick of Myself. Teaming him with Nicolas Cage, the Ari Aster-produced Dream Scenario premiered at TIFF and I found at least the first half to be quite an entertaining, sharp Kaufman-esque psychological character study.
15. Dream Scenario (Kristoffer Borgli; Nov. 10 limited)
In a rare feat, Kristoffer Borgli premiered his second U.S. release of the year after the jet-black Norwegian comedy Sick of Myself. Teaming him with Nicolas Cage, the Ari Aster-produced Dream Scenario premiered at TIFF and I found at least the first half to be quite an entertaining, sharp Kaufman-esque psychological character study.
- 11/1/2023
- by Jordan Raup
- The Film Stage
Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.The Deep Blue Sea.REMEMBERINGTerence Davies has died, aged 77. Michael Koresky, who wrote a monograph on Davies in 2014, penned a beautiful Sight & Sound obituary, in which he wrote that “no one made movies like Davies, who precisely sculpted out of a subjective past, creating films that glided on waves of contemplation and observation, inviting viewers to join him in the burnished darkness of a past about which he felt complex, contradictory feelings.” Last year, Dan Schindel wrote for Notebook about the role of poetry in Benediction (2022), and in 2012, Michael Guillen interviewed Davies about The Deep Blue Sea (2011). "The problem with film is that it's always in the eternal present,” says Davies. “But it's closest, I think, to music. You don't have to be a musician to follow a symphonic argument. If you love the music,...
- 10/11/2023
- MUBI
"Come, come! I'm sick to death of this particular self. I want another." Janus Films has revealed an official US trailer for an acclaimed experimental documentary film called Orlando, My Political Biography, from Spanish filmmaker Paul B. Preciado making his directorial debut. This has played at many festivals all over the world this year, including most recently at TIFF, NYFF, Vancouver, and AFI Fest this fall. Academic virtuoso turned filmmaker Paul B. Preciado's award-winning doc tells his and others' stories of transition through unique reenactments & visual interpretations of Virginia Woolf's novel Orlando: A Biography. "Not content to simply update a seminal work, Preciado interrogates the relevance of Orlando in the continuing struggle against anti-trans ideologies and in the fight for global trans rights." The doc features 20 trans and non-binary people playing the role of Orlando as they perform interpretations of scenes. It may not be for everyone, but it looks...
- 10/6/2023
- by Alex Billington
- firstshowing.net
Few 2023 features have made a streak comparable to Orlando, My Political Biography, the sole documentary to play in main slates for Telluride, TIFF, and NYFF––after winning the Special Jury, Best Documentary, Tagesspiegel Reader’s Jury, and Special Mention prizes at Berlinale. Paul B. Preciado’s film casts “twenty trans and non-binary individuals in the role of Orlando as they perform interpretations of scenes from [Virginia Woolf’s] novel, weaving into Woolf’s narrative their own stories of identity and transition.” Janus Films and Sideshow will release it in New York on November 10 and LA on November 17, ahead of which there is a trailer.
As Rory O’Connor said in his review, “Enter Paul B. Preciado, the celebrated French author of Testo Junkie and An Apartment on Uranus, and one of the most revered voices in that discourse. Orlando, My Political Biography, Preciado’s new work––and his first behind the camera––is the...
As Rory O’Connor said in his review, “Enter Paul B. Preciado, the celebrated French author of Testo Junkie and An Apartment on Uranus, and one of the most revered voices in that discourse. Orlando, My Political Biography, Preciado’s new work––and his first behind the camera––is the...
- 10/5/2023
- by Leonard Pearce
- The Film Stage
Virginia Woolf’s novel “Orlando: A Biography” charts 300 years in the life of a male nobleman who, beginning in the times of Elizabeth I, eventually experiences an unexplained sex change at age 30. Orlando then lives the rest of her days as a woman. The 1928 book remains a classic of gender and feminist studies but is largely considered the first great work of trans fiction, later inspiring Sally Potter’s own 1992 movie, “Orlando,” with Tilda Swinton.
Now, the book is the subject of trans theorist Paul B. Preciado’s “Orlando, My Political Autobiography,” a playful French-language cinema essay in which more than 20 trans and non-binary people take on the role of Orlando, using Woolf’s words to ground their own experiences. It sounds heady and challenging on paper, but Preciado’s film is an irreverent mix of art-directed social manifesto and moving documentary in which individuals recount less their struggles for...
Now, the book is the subject of trans theorist Paul B. Preciado’s “Orlando, My Political Autobiography,” a playful French-language cinema essay in which more than 20 trans and non-binary people take on the role of Orlando, using Woolf’s words to ground their own experiences. It sounds heady and challenging on paper, but Preciado’s film is an irreverent mix of art-directed social manifesto and moving documentary in which individuals recount less their struggles for...
- 10/5/2023
- by Ryan Lattanzio
- Indiewire
Orlando’s transformation happens without much fuss. The eponymous hero of Virgina Woolf’s novel went to sleep as a man and woke up, a week later, a woman. “No human being, since the world began, has ever looked more ravishing,” Woolf’s narrator, an anonymous biographer, observes. The subject herself seems unperturbed by the sudden gender shift. After noticing the change, she takes a bath.
The biographer approaches Orlando’s sudden transition with a similar calm. There’s little time spent musing on the mechanics. She acknowledges the event (“Orlando had become a woman — there is no denying it”) and insists the character hasn’t changed (“Her memory then, went back through all the events of her past life without encountering any obstacle”). Orlando is a woman. The process was painless. Now, on with the story.
There’s a strange power to this incurious posture. It treats Orlando’s...
The biographer approaches Orlando’s sudden transition with a similar calm. There’s little time spent musing on the mechanics. She acknowledges the event (“Orlando had become a woman — there is no denying it”) and insists the character hasn’t changed (“Her memory then, went back through all the events of her past life without encountering any obstacle”). Orlando is a woman. The process was painless. Now, on with the story.
There’s a strange power to this incurious posture. It treats Orlando’s...
- 10/4/2023
- by Lovia Gyarkye
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
The early 21st century has proved to be a flashpoint for trans visibility and rights, but what’s too often lost amid our moment’s mix of jubilation and strife is that interwar Europe was another flashpoint. That was when, as Paul B. Preciado points out in Orlando, My Political Biography, trailblazing psychologist Magnus Hirschfeld began advocating for trans rights and Virginia Woolf published her gender-bending novel Orlando: A Biography. In his documentary, Preciado draws a long, winding connection between Woolf’s epoch of change and our own, because, as he asserts in his voiceover narration, “the world today is full of Orlandos.”
Drawing from Woolf but more in tune with Godard and deconstruction than high literary modernism, My Political Biography can be both heartfelt and tedious. Preciado’s interlacing of the personal, the interpersonal, and the political is intricate and evocative in ways that often belie his no-spectacle staging and no-frills camerawork.
Drawing from Woolf but more in tune with Godard and deconstruction than high literary modernism, My Political Biography can be both heartfelt and tedious. Preciado’s interlacing of the personal, the interpersonal, and the political is intricate and evocative in ways that often belie his no-spectacle staging and no-frills camerawork.
- 10/3/2023
- by Pat Brown
- Slant Magazine
Films about Grammy Award winner Jon Batiste, Andy Kaufman and designer John Galliano are part of this year’s Telluride Film Festival documentary feature lineup.
In all, 22 feature and four short documentaries are heading to the 50th edition of Tff, where buzz for docs seeking Oscar consideration frequently takes hold.
The lineup, kept under wraps until the eve of the fest’s opening on Aug. 31, includes docs from novice and veteran documentarians, including Errol Morris (“The Pigeon Tunnel”), Madeleine Gavin (“Beyond Utopia”), Matthew Heineman (“American Symphony”) and Paul B. Preciado.
After premiering “Orlando, My Political Biography” in Berlinale last February, Preciado garnered four awards, including the Teddy award for best documentary. Sideshow and Janus Films acquired North American rights to the doc in March.
In the docu, the first-time director, who is a trans writer and activist, uses Virginia Woolf’s 1928 book “Orlando,” the first novel in which the main...
In all, 22 feature and four short documentaries are heading to the 50th edition of Tff, where buzz for docs seeking Oscar consideration frequently takes hold.
The lineup, kept under wraps until the eve of the fest’s opening on Aug. 31, includes docs from novice and veteran documentarians, including Errol Morris (“The Pigeon Tunnel”), Madeleine Gavin (“Beyond Utopia”), Matthew Heineman (“American Symphony”) and Paul B. Preciado.
After premiering “Orlando, My Political Biography” in Berlinale last February, Preciado garnered four awards, including the Teddy award for best documentary. Sideshow and Janus Films acquired North American rights to the doc in March.
In the docu, the first-time director, who is a trans writer and activist, uses Virginia Woolf’s 1928 book “Orlando,” the first novel in which the main...
- 8/30/2023
- by Addie Morfoot
- Variety Film + TV
Though there was no explicit theme across its broad variety of films, much of the international competition at the 2023 Jeonju International Film Festival seemed to address a particular type of alienation in contemporary society. A real standout was Chinese filmmaker Wu Lang’s debut feature, Absence, which premiered earlier this year at Berlinale. Starring frequent Tsai Ming-Liang collaborator Lee Kang-sheng as Han Jiangyu, a man attempting to build a new life with his estranged partner (Li Meng) and the child (Liang Wangling) who only recently learned of his existence following a 10-year prison stint, it owes a clear debt to Tsai’s work, with elements of Jia Zhang-ke also noticeable in its DNA.
As the film’s central story proceeds, seemingly dissolving into obscure fragments following a relatively linear, economical opening stretch, Wu’s richly textured imagery turns the decaying urban environment of modern-day China into a lyrical evocation of...
As the film’s central story proceeds, seemingly dissolving into obscure fragments following a relatively linear, economical opening stretch, Wu’s richly textured imagery turns the decaying urban environment of modern-day China into a lyrical evocation of...
- 5/4/2023
- by David Robb
- Slant Magazine
A century from publication, Virginia Woolf’s Orlando: A Biography is still in vogue. Just before the pandemic, Tilda Swinton––who played Orlando in Sally Potter’s landmark film 30 years ago––curated a photography exhibition for Aperture inspired by the novel. Early last year, Megan Fernandes had Woolf’s text in mind when she wrote her eulogy for Roe vs Wade. More recently, theater director Neil Bartlett took a new adaptation to the West End, casting non-binary performer Emma Corrin in the title role. For a while, Potter’s adaptation seemed like the last word on Orlando, but Woolf’s story only grows more relevant (and more malleable) as each generation claims it for themselves.
In her review of Bartlett’s play, the theater critic Helen Shaw wrote that the novel “slots into the current gender discourse with a nearly audible click.” Enter Paul B. Preciado, the celebrated French author...
In her review of Bartlett’s play, the theater critic Helen Shaw wrote that the novel “slots into the current gender discourse with a nearly audible click.” Enter Paul B. Preciado, the celebrated French author...
- 3/23/2023
- by Rory O'Connor
- The Film Stage
Sideshow and Janus Films have bought North American rights for “Orlando, My Political Biography,” Paul B. Preciado’s film which won four awards at the Berlinale.
In “Orlando, My Political Biography,” Preciado sheds light on Virginia Woolf’s “Orlando,” the first novel in which the main character changes sex in the middle of the story. A century later, Preciado, who is a trans writer and activist, decides to send a film letter to Woolf, telling her that Orlando has come out of her fiction and is living a life she could have never imagined. Preciado organizes a casting and gathers 26 contemporary trans and non-binary people, from 8 to 70 years old, who embody Orlando.
The film was produced by Les Films du Poisson’s Yaël Fogiel and Laetitia Gonzalez and co-produced by 24images’ Annie Ohayon and Farid Rezkallah and Arte.
“Orlando, My Political Biography” world premiered in the Berlinale Encounters section and...
In “Orlando, My Political Biography,” Preciado sheds light on Virginia Woolf’s “Orlando,” the first novel in which the main character changes sex in the middle of the story. A century later, Preciado, who is a trans writer and activist, decides to send a film letter to Woolf, telling her that Orlando has come out of her fiction and is living a life she could have never imagined. Preciado organizes a casting and gathers 26 contemporary trans and non-binary people, from 8 to 70 years old, who embody Orlando.
The film was produced by Les Films du Poisson’s Yaël Fogiel and Laetitia Gonzalez and co-produced by 24images’ Annie Ohayon and Farid Rezkallah and Arte.
“Orlando, My Political Biography” world premiered in the Berlinale Encounters section and...
- 3/7/2023
- by Elsa Keslassy
- Variety Film + TV
The gender-neutral acting prize was won by Spain’s Sofía Otero for ’20,000 Species of Bees’.
Nicolas Philibert’s documentary On The Adamant, about a floating care centre in Paris, was awarded Golden Bear for best film at the Berlin International Film Festival tonight (February 25).
The film, which is being handled internationally by Les Films du Losange, is the fourth documentary to take top honours at the Berlinale.
German films found particular favour with the jury, presided over by Kristen Stewart, with no less than three of the Bear statuettes going to local productions: the Silver Bear Grand Jury award for Christian Petzold’s Afire,...
Nicolas Philibert’s documentary On The Adamant, about a floating care centre in Paris, was awarded Golden Bear for best film at the Berlin International Film Festival tonight (February 25).
The film, which is being handled internationally by Les Films du Losange, is the fourth documentary to take top honours at the Berlinale.
German films found particular favour with the jury, presided over by Kristen Stewart, with no less than three of the Bear statuettes going to local productions: the Silver Bear Grand Jury award for Christian Petzold’s Afire,...
- 2/26/2023
- by Martin Blaney
- ScreenDaily
Click here to read the full article.
The laidback yet lively sound of “Baila Esta Cumbia,” one of Tejano queen Selena’s beloved hits, echoed throughout the Dolby Family Terrace on the top floor of the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures on Sunday. The song was playing as part of a singalong – and sign-along – led by Deaf West Theatre in English, Spanish and American Sign Language as a pregame for 25th anniversary screenings of the biopic Selena, a centerpiece of the museum’s 2nd annual Community Celebration event.
As part of its founding commitment to accessibility and inclusion, the museum held a day of free food, drinks and activities that emphasized art and culture by and for the people of Los Angeles. While the celebration was available to all visitors on Sunday, the museum worked with a dozen community partners to invite their constituents to enjoy complimentary admission.
“We could...
The laidback yet lively sound of “Baila Esta Cumbia,” one of Tejano queen Selena’s beloved hits, echoed throughout the Dolby Family Terrace on the top floor of the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures on Sunday. The song was playing as part of a singalong – and sign-along – led by Deaf West Theatre in English, Spanish and American Sign Language as a pregame for 25th anniversary screenings of the biopic Selena, a centerpiece of the museum’s 2nd annual Community Celebration event.
As part of its founding commitment to accessibility and inclusion, the museum held a day of free food, drinks and activities that emphasized art and culture by and for the people of Los Angeles. While the celebration was available to all visitors on Sunday, the museum worked with a dozen community partners to invite their constituents to enjoy complimentary admission.
“We could...
- 7/26/2022
- by Rebecca Sun
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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