A scene from “Yes” on the left and Tilda Swinton in “Orlando” on the right
Always political, always experimental, Sally Potter is one of the most exciting filmmakers in contemporary cinema. MoMA took notice this month and screened her masterwork, Orlando, which managed to launch both her own and Tilda Swinton’s career. Based on the novel by Virginia Woolf, Orlando is a science fiction/fantasy tale of a gender-shifting character who gets to experience life both a man and a woman over a period of hundreds of years. Potter’s body of work continues to broach radical topics while maintaining an aesthetic principle, which is one of the reasons I like her so much. Even her film still (above, right) looks like a perfectly composed Jacques Louis David.
argotandochre.wordpress.com 