Orlando (1992)

Thursday, January 23, 2020 @ 7:00 PM
Globe Cinema - 617 8 Avenue SW, Calgary, AB
$12 General | $10 Members/Seniors/Students | $40 5-Pack Punch Pass | $99 Season Pass

Sally Potter's Orlando is a magical, visually resplendent tale of gender-bending social time travel through 400 years of European history.

“Well with your reputation Orlando, who else would have you?” the aristocrat says to Tilda Swinton at one point in Orlando (1992). Based on Virginia Woolf’s semi-roman à clef novel, Orlando is a breezy, magical, visually resplendent tale of gender-bending social time travel. It established British director Sally Potter as a daring cinematic force to be reckoned with and gave Tilda Swinton a role she was born to play. Seen through the eyes of a protagonist who switches between genders as if it was “no difference at all,” it’s a film about love, death, poetry, sex, childhood, and old age, set through 400 years of European history. It’s a subversive spectacle that uses history as a stage to play, tweak, and experiment with ideas of identity (sexual and otherwise), social construct, and art. And in offering a sumptuous and humorous exploration of mores, past and present (while featuring a few literary celebrity cameos), it fully rejects the notion a period piece must be stuffy and formal. The modern cinema is all the better for it.

- Written by Scott Lang

FOCUS: SEXUALITY

Jean-Luc Godard famously once said “All you need to make a movie is a girl and a gun.” Film critic Pauline Kael seemingly echoed this statement when she titled one of her books Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang. Both filmmaker and critic observed the obvious relationship of sexuality and violence to cinema itself, and in both cases the amorous element comes first. Our Focus: Sexuality series explores how sexuality over the course of the last century has paralleled the development of cinematic language. Featuring films from the 1920s up to the 1990s, this globe-spanning series presents key films that consider subjects such as female sexual autonomy, gender fluidity and performativity, amorous power dynamics, and toxic predation. These are firebrand movies, emphasizing how the presentation of sexuality and human relationships on-screen is limited by the specific sociocultural framework of their era. In their emotional and cinematic power, these films are still strongly resonant and provocative today.

About Calgary Cinematheque

We are a non-profit film society dedicated to presenting significant, challenging, and essential works of cinema art in Calgary. During our season, which runs from October to April, we screen films weekly, in curated programs which situate each film in a thematic and historical context. We do this because we believe cinema is an essential form of artistic, social, and political expression. Audiences should be able to engage with a wide range of cinematic expression, not only with what is commercially viable. We believe in the power of sharing these experiences with other people in a theatrical setting and we strive to cultivate a community around that experience.  

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