Sally Potter

The fourth episode of 'The Art of Directing', presented by actress Cush Jumbo, features British film-maker Sally Potter. Her experimental, genre-defying work includes her Oscar-nominated adaptation of Virginia Woolf's Orlando (1992), which helped kick-start the career of Tilda Swinton. Potter's films have delighted audiences for their willingness to play with all forms of cinema and push A-list actors out of their comfort zones. Her first feature film The Gold Diggers (1983) was described as "a feminist sci-fi musical extravaganza". It starred Julie Christie and was one of the first ever films to use an entirely female crew. The multi-skilled Potter went on to dance in the title role of her film The Tango Lesson (1997), write a film in iambic pentameter, Yes (2004), and compose the music for the mobile phone film, Rage (2009). In 2012 she cast Christina Hendricks as a British housewife in the coming of age film Ginger and Rosa (2012). Her new film, The Party, is a surreal Brexit comedy starring Kristin Scott Thomas and Timothy Spall. We join Potter in her London writing studio to find out how she goes about crafting her ground-breaking scripts. And she opens up about her distinctive approach to working with actors and why the A-listers line up to appear in her films.