Charlotte Sally Potter (born 19 September 1949) is an English film director and screenwriter. She is best known for directing Orlando (1992), which won the audience prize for Best Film at the Venice Film Festival.
Early life
Potter was born and raised in London. Her mother was a music teacher and her father was an interior designer and a poet. Her younger brother Nic became the bassist for the rock group Van der Graaf Generator. When asked about her background, which influenced her work as a filmmaker, she responds, "I came from an atheist background and an anarchist background, which meant that I grew up in an environment that was full of questions, where nothing could be taken for granted."
When asked about what she learned about filmmaking from trying to do it as a seventeen-year-old woman in the UK in the 60s, Potter laughs.You know, most kinds of securities are illusions, and we need to kind of duck and weave as filmmakers, go with the flow, go where the harvest is. [...] I knew very early on, if I waited for somebody to give me money to do something, I’d never do anything.
Career
Potter began making amateur films at age 14, using an 8mm camera given to her by an uncle. She eventually dropped out of school at age 16 to pursue filmmaking. From 1968–1970 she worked as a kitchen worker and a picture researcher for BBC in order to support herself and her work. She had joined the London Film-Makers' Co-op and began making experimental short films, including Jerk (1969) and Play (1970). She later trained as a dancer and choreographer at the London School of Contemporary Dance. She made both film and dance pieces, including Combines (1972), before founding Limited Dance Company with Jacky Lansley.
Potter became an award-winning performance artist and theatre director, with shows including Mounting, Death and the Maiden and Berlin. In addition, she was a member of several music bands (including Feminist Improvising Group and The Film Music Orchestra) working as a lyricist and singer. She collaborated (as a singer-songwriter) with composer Lindsay Cooper on the song cycle Oh Moscow, which was performed throughout Europe, Russia and North America in the late 1980s and commercially released.
Potter continued as a composer when she collaborated with David Motion on the soundtrack to Orlando. She wrote the score for the film, The Tango Lesson, for which she sang "I am You" in the final scene. Her most recent music work is as producer and co-composer with Fred Frith of the original tracks for Yes and Rage.
Referring to her career as a choreographer, Potter said, "Choreography was the perfect 'poor theatre.' All you needed were willing bodies and some space. So it was as a choreographer that I learnt how to direct and it was as a dancer that I learnt how to work."
Potter returned to filmmaking with her short film Thriller (1979), which was a hit on the international festival circuit. This was followed by her first feature film, The Gold Diggers (1983), starring Julie Christie. She directed another short film, The London Story (1986); a documentary series for Channel 4, Tears, Laughter, Fear and Rage (1986); and I am an Ox, I am a Horse, I am a Man, I am a Woman (1988), a film about women in Soviet cinema.
As director of the internationally distributed Orlando (1992), Potter received greater appreciation for her writing and direction. Starring Tilda Swinton, the film was based on Virginia Woolf's novel by the same name and adapted for the screen by Potter. In addition to two Academy Award nominations, Orlando won more than 25 international awards, including the Felix, awarded by the European Film Academy for the best Young European Film of 1993; and first prizes at St Petersburg, Thessaloniki and other European festivals.
The novel had previously been considered impossible to adapt for the screen, because it took place over 400 years and followed a character whose sex changes from a man to a woman. Funding the feature proved difficult, and Orlando took seven years to complete. Filming and editing took 20 weeks. Preparation for the film, including adapting the novel, funding the film, scouting locations, etc., took four years.
When asked whether she thought she would continue to work on feminist themes, Potter replied: I have come to the conclusion that I can't use that term in my work. Not because of a disavowal of the underlying principles that gave birth to that word – the commitment to liberation, dignity, equality. But it has become a trigger word that stops people's thinking. You literally see people's eyes glaze over with exhaustion when the word flashes into the conversation.