WRIF Film: Orlando, My Political Biography

Writer, philosopher, and now filmmaker, Paul B. Preciado’s newest work is poetic in form and function. Hybridizing literary adaptation with modes of fiction and nonfiction filmmaking, Preciado uses Virginia Woolf’s 1928 century-spanning, gender-bending romance, Orlando: A Biography, as a template for the modern trans experience. Interlacing passages from the novel with contemporary testimonies, including the filmmaker’s own, the film fashions its focus on “gender poets,” those whose lives transcend the bounds of binary expression. Preciado’s cast of contemporary Orlandos offer intimate access and playful insight into their experiences with hormones, gender-affirming care, institutional erasure, and the political positioning of trans-people subjected to a normative regime. No two stories are the same, and, yet, somehow Woolf’s fantastical biography contains them all.

“Preciado’s superpower in this warm, generous movie is that while he speaks brilliantly to the cages of identity, he sees — and shares — a way out of them. He talks and listens, he exhorts and confesses. He insists on pleasure, speaks to happiness, invites laughter and opens worlds. Here, joy reigns supreme, and it is exhilarating.” – The New York Times

“Part trans documentary, part autobiography, and part adaptation, Orlando, My Political Biography, finds Preciado grappling with the possibilities and limits of this novel he loves.” – Autostraddle

Tickets & Festival Passes Available Here: https://uvjam.org/wrif-2024/