The Kristiansand premiere of ↗︎ Paul B. Preciado’s ↗︎ Orlando, My Political Biography (Orlando, ma biographie politique, 2023) at Cinemateket, Tuesday, 8 October at 6 PM. Followed by a panel with artist Jo Ravn Abusland, Mary Ann Skretteberg Andersen and Liam Eric Bula (UiA), and Tine Semb (Karmaklubb*). Introduction by Kristine Halmrast (UiA). Surprice: Special Royal guest: ↗︎ Esben Esther Pirelli Benestad! After mingle at FOAJEEN from approx. 8:30. DJ: Brita°UT of local gems Klubb Kosmos. We are so happy to be invited to this event! Yet another big screen. Cinemateket event page ↗︎ here. Facebook ↗︎ here. *** The F* AMAZING FILM MUSIC ↗︎ here. ***

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In 1928, Virginia Woolf wrote ↗︎ Orlando: A Biography, the first novel in which the main character changes sex in the middle of the story. A century later, trans writer, and activist ↗︎ Paul B. Preciado decides to send a film letter to Virginia Woolf: Her Orlando has come out of her fiction and is living a life she could have never imagined.

Further reading: A century after the publication of Orlando: A Biography by Virginia Woolf, Paul B. Preciado, philosopher and trans activist, addresses a letter to tell her that her character has come true: the world is becoming Orlandesque. Preciado calls a cast: “Who are the contemporary Orlandos?” 25 different people, all trans and non-binary, from 8 years old to 70 who come to play Woolf’s fictional character while also narrating their own lives; and a series of mid twentieth century trans archives that evoke the real historical Orlandos in their struggle for recognition and visibility. The spectator gradually finds Orlando’s bearings as the portrait emerges of a collective being with multiple faces, voices, bodies. The film follows the same structure as the Virginia Woolf ’s novel: a travel diary through history, both intimate and political. “I first read Woolf’s book when I was a teenager in Spain, well before I knew that gender transitioning was possible. Woolf’s fictional character al- lowed me to imagine my own life, to desire and to embody change. It turns out that with the years, I have become an Orlando. My biography is made of the collective history of thousands of invisible Orlandos. It is a history of struggle within an oppressive gender and sex binary regime. Being trans is not just to transition from femininity to masculinity (or vice versa), but to engage in a process of internal “orlandisation”: a poetic journey in which a new language to name oneself and the world is invented.” — A gender transition is a transformative voyage, a movement of disidentification, a practice of freedom, rather than a mere production of identity. Thus, the film draws the portrait of a changing world and the ongoing gender and non-binary revolution.

Karmaklubb* was involved in ↗︎ the Norway premiere of the film fall 2023 at Kunstnernes Hus.