Philosopher Paul B. Preciado premiered his playful debut film, “Orlando: My Political Biography”, at the Berlin Film Festival on Saturday. The film examines the struggles of binary and trans people through the novel “Orlando” by British novelist Virginia Woolf. In its opening scene, two non-binary people are shown reading in the woods. The film features 25 French-speaking trans and non-binary actors playing Orlando. They blend recited passages from Woolf’s book with their own first-person accounts in a modernist shift of perspective that echoes Woolf’s own experimentation.
The film aims to shift the discourse surrounding non-binary people in a society that can be hostile to them. Preciado began his own transition in 2010, and he says that for many transition people, there is an impossibility of being recognized publicly, socially, and politically. This means not having an identity card with one’s name and not being able to have a bank account.
Preciado believes that Woolf’s novel is still relevant in the contemporary West, where people are only now beginning to accept the notion of non-binary categories. He said, “Orlando is still alive…We are living an Orlando moment in history.” This year’s Berlinale is featuring several films about non-binary and transgender people, such as “Kokomo City” and “Transfariana”, reinforcing Berlin’s status as a major LGBTQ+ center.
Preciado sees Berlin as the perfect location to premiere his film. The city opened up the horizon of sexology by founding the Institute of Sexology nine years before Woolf’s novel was published. He said, “The transgender revolution is not happening in the future…It is happening now.”
