Taking advantage of glasnost, Sally Potter travelled to the Soviet Union in 1985, which she had visited several times previously and to which she felt a strong artistic and political connection, to explore the state film archives. I am an Ox, I am a Horse, I am a Man, I am a Woman introduced British television viewers to some of the masterpieces of Soviet cinema that had been trapped behind the Iron Curtain. It looked at the mythic figure of Mother Russia as well as at the lived realities of making art under communism, emphatically foregrounding the equal role of women as directors, writers and performers… […] The documentary’s title is suggestive of Orlando’s multifaceted identity, and the interviewees talk about being female in terms that go far beyond 1980s Anglo-American feminism, influencing Potter’s developing stance on gender. In screenwriter Natalia Ryazantseva’s onscreen claim that “women are better equipped to make… detailed observations” of “the depths of the human soul” is an echo of Potter’s statement to David Ehrenstein that Orlando is not about the sex wars, but the immortal soul. The interviews also build a comprehensively different picture of the relationship between art and life in a society based on socialist theory and practice. Director Kira Muratova argues that “filmmaking is not an island. It’s part of the historical mainland of human activity”. This striking reappraisal of artmaking as honest labour rather than a dilettantish distraction will also shape Orlando’s discovery of her talents. […] Through the documentary, Potter hones her craft as a director to embrace all three meanings, framed by Georgian director Lana Gogoberidze’s assertion that she wants her films to be “individual and self-expressive – and I want to express myself as a woman”. With Orlando, Potter proclaimed herself an artist by I am an Ox’s definition: individual, self-expressive, observing the human soul in work that is part of the historical mainland of human activity. 

Sophie Mayer, The Cinema of Sally Potter: a Politics of Love, Wallflower Press, London 2009