Vita & Virginia

Chanya Button : 2018

The affair and the friendship of authors Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West – both uncompromising in their insistence to live, love, and create to the fullest – constitutes one of the most fascinating relationships in literary history. The year is 1922. Though happily married, Vita is as notorious for her dalliances with women and iconoclastic attitudes toward gender as she is famous for her aristocratic ancestry and writerly success. Virginia, meanwhile, is a celebrated writer, publisher, and member of the Bloomsbury Group, those innovative moderns already revolutionising literature. When Vita receives an invitation to Bloomsbury, she is elated at the thought of meeting the enigmatic Woolf and, not surprisingly perhaps, becomes obsessed with the notion of seducing her. Between Virginia's mental health struggles and Vita's impulsiveness – and the concern of their husbands, families, and mutual friends – their romance is bound to be tumultuous. Yet tumult can fuel creativity and Vita's singular persona will eventually be channelled into Orlando, the novel their relationship inspired and one of Virginia's greatest works. Chanya Button's feature premiered in Special Presentations at Toronto International Film Festival 2018.