Sally Potter

Sally Potter
Born	19 September 1949 (1949-09-19) London, England, United Kingdom
Occupation	Film director & screenwriter

Charlotte Sally Potter (born 19 September 1949, London) is an English film director and screenwriter.

Career

Having left school at sixteen to become a filmmaker, Potter joined the London Film-Makers' Co-op and started 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, making 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’s music work continued later when she co-composed with David Motion the soundtrack to Orlando, and produced the score for The Tango Lesson. Her most recent music work is as producer and co-composer with Fred Frith of the original tracks for Yes and Rage.)

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; a 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.

The internationally distributed Orlando (1992) brought Potter’s work to a wider audience. Starring Tilda Swinton, the film was based on Virginia Woolf’s novel 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 festivals.

Her next film was The Tango Lesson (1996), in which she also performed, with renowned tango dancer Pablo Veron. First presented at the Venice Film Festival, the film was awarded the “Ombú de Oro” for Best Film at the Mar del Plata Film Festival, Argentina, the SADAIC Great Award from the Sociedad Argentina de Autores y Compositores de Música, as well as receiving Best Film nominations from BAFTA and the US National Board of Review.

The Man Who Cried (starring Johnny Depp, Christina Ricci, Cate Blanchett and John Turturro), premiered at the Venice Film Festival in 2000 and was followed by Yes (2004), with Joan Allen, Simon Abkarian and Sam Neill.

In 2007 Potter directed Bizet’s Carmen for English National Opera at the London Coliseum, starring Alice Coote and designed by Es Devlin.

Rage (2009) was the first feature ever to premiere on cell-phones. The cast includes Judi Dench, Steve Buscemi, Lily Cole and Jude Law. Rage was in competition at the Berlin Film Festival in 2009 and nominated for a WEBBY for Best Drama in 2010.

Sally Potter had full career retrospectives of her film and video work at the BFI Southbank, London, and Filmoteca, Madrid, in 2009, and MoMA, New York, in 2010. She has a blog and message board at www.sallypotter.com.

Feature film credits

• Thriller (1979)
• London Story (1980)
• The Gold Diggers (1983)
• I Am an Ox, I Am a Horse, I Am a Man, I Am a Woman (1988)
• Orlando (1992)
• The Tango Lesson (1997)
• The Man Who Cried (2000)
• Yes (2004)
• Rage (2009)

Further reading

• Catherine Fowler, SALLY POTTER Urbana and Chicago, University of Illinois Press, November 2008
• Sophie Mayer, THE CINEMA OF SALLY POTTER A Politics of Love, 224 pages´, Wallflower Press, Wallflower Publishing Ltd., July 2009

External links

• Official site
• Blog
• Sally Potter at the Internet Movie Database
• Sally Potter at the British Film Institute's Screenonline
• An interview with director Sally Potter, guernicamag.com, interview, October 2005, accessed 5 July 2009
• Who is Sally Potter, youtube.com, video, 17 April 2007, accessed 5 July 2009
• Carmen, English National Opera (ENO) site, accessed 5 July 2009
• Official Rage Site Official Rage Website
• Literature on Sally Potter