Name: Ottinger's Berlin Trilogy: Freak Orlando
Start: 2025-10-15T20:00:00+01:00
Location: Dove Street South, Bristol

Dir: Ulrike Ottinger, 1981, West Germany, 126 mins, German with English subtitles, Cert: 18 (CTBA)
Wed 15 October // 20:00
Tickets: £5
A gender-fluid time traveller journeys through history in Ottinger's deeply surreal and playful reimagining of Virginia Woolf's Orlando.
The magnetic Magdalena Montezuma stars as Orlando, who shape-shifts through time and gender in five spectacular episodes spanning from mythological prehistory to the modern era, encountering Spanish Inquisitors, carnival performers, and Siamese twins along the way.
Co-starring Delphine Seyrig and featuring a cameo from Eddie Constantine, this "small theater of the world" is part fever dream, part historical epic and wholly unforgettable. Ottinger conjures meaning through a kalaidoscope of striking costumes, elaborate sets, and a cast of "sexual misfits, freaks, time travelers, and hedonistic dandies."
Freak Orlando is a delirious, DIY epic that fuses drag, punk, and performance art into something else entirely its own.
"A lost movie that lives up to its hype... a fever dream reimagining of Greek mythology, the Spanish Inquisition, and our modern life." - Shock Cinema Magazine
“A rich pageant of the grotesque... baroque, comic, and perverse.” – New York Times
Step into the vibrant, subversive world of Ulrike Ottinger, a visionary of the German New Wave and a true original of queer cinema. This October, we bring her acclaimed Berlin Trilogy to the big screen: a mesmerising journey through Cold War-era Berlin, reimagined as a surreal playground for sexual misfits, time travelers, and glamorous outcasts.
With lavish production design, camp flair, and fearless performances, Ottinger’s films are cathartic expressions of feminine experience, blending radical social commentary with deliriously entertaining cinematic spectacle. Still as bold and boundary-pushing as ever, her vision invites both Ottinger newcomers and long-time admirers to be captivated by her unique vision.