"Orlando, My Political Biography" explores trans and non-binary identity

Writer/director Paul B. Preciado ingeniously combines humorous moments with solid social critique in his documentary “Orlando: My Political Biography.” Guiding viewers through the personal and political aspects of trans and non-binary individuals, twenty-one speakers assert to the camera, “I am Orlando,” referring to Virginia Woolf’s satiric, 1928 novel, “Orlando: A Biography.”

In it, during Elizabeth I reign, a nobleman, who lives for centuries, awakes after sleeping for a week having become a woman and announcing, “No difference.” Woolf’s novel impressed Preciado growing up in Spain, and they carry and cherish a photo of Woolf to this day. Beginning with Preciado on screen, through voiceover narration, a trans and non-binary cast offers poetic and theoretical commentary on the misguided sexual binarism and normative heterosexuality that still dominate the modern age, “shared fictions that we forget we can question, modify, change,” as one observes.

Several individuals insist on explicitly introducing themselves as a trans-man or a trans-woman, thereby emphatically asserting their authentic identity. Through reenactments, quotations from Woolf’s novel, and playful posing in a variety of outfits, they interrogate crossing gender boundaries. Astutely, each proudly wearing a ruff (those decorative linen or muslin collars worn in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries), they note, “To be trans is to discover the backstage of sexual and gender difference and that masculinity and femininity are political fictions which we have learned to perceive as natural through repetition and violence.” Moreover, in this extensive survey of attitudes, both positive and negative, Preciado includes significant details; for example, “the first sex change operations to hit news” occurred between 1900 and 1920 and archival footage of transgender activist Christine Jorgensen.

Lest this all sound quite solemn, Preciado lightens interviews with humor, playful costuming, and satiric mischievousness with amusing signs, lively music, a scene with a psychiatrist, and even an operation on Woolf’s novel. This is, in my experience, the first wholly trans film that is educational, provocative, and immensely entertaining. Primarily in French, a bit of Spanish and English, with English subtitles, “Orlando, My Political Biography” screens at Webster University’s Winifred Moore auditorium Thursday, December 7; Friday, December 15; and Sunday, December 17, at 7:00 each of those evenings. For more information, you may visit the film series website.