Artists' Film Club: Ulrike Ottinger: Freak Orlando

German filmmaker Ulrike Ottinger blends Tod Browning’s Freaks (1932) with Virginia Woolf’s novel Orlando (1928) in this rarely screened tale. Set in former West Berlin, Ottinger’s uncompromising fantasy explores society’s outsiders in a boundary breaking cinematic epic of experimentation and visual extravagance. The film unfolds as a story told in five episodes.

Originally selected for Another Version of Events, the official film programme for Liverpool Biennial 2016, 9 July – 16 October.

Director Ulrike Ottinger, 1981, Germany, 126 mins