My Day with Tarna

Nick Broomfield and a documentary crew visit Pandora's Box, an up-scale house of bondage on Manhattan's Fifth Avenue, where clients pay $175 an hour to be subservient to mistresses. Mistresses talk about their craft; a few clients, usually masked, are interviewed as well. Then, the camera watches sessions organized around fetishes: rubber, wrestling, corporal punishment, masochism, and infantilism. Mistress Raven, the owner of Pandora's Box, explains that pain need not be part of the subservient experience: it is, at its root, a transfer of power. After their session has ended, clients talk about how drained, relaxed, relieved, and at peace they are.

Noted documentary filmmakers Iana Porter and Sasha Waters direct this understated and decidedly un-exploitative look at the world of sadomasochism both as therapy and as business. The film focuses on three New York dominatrices who willingly, lovingly, flog, smack, and abuse their clients: young perky Carrie, glitzy 30-something Sonja Blaze, and Teutonic matron Eva. All argue that they are providing society with an important, if quasi-sexual, service. Their clients ardently agree.

Analog video by Sylvère Lotringer. Extended conversation between two dominatrixes, a younger American woman and an older French woman (Catherine Robbe-Grillet, writer and wife of Alain Robbe-Grillet).

An hour-long workout with a BDSM theme on a NYC rooftop, taught by a variety of instructors.

The film accompanies the West Berlin dominatrix “Lady de Winter” through her everyday life. Her work is partly documented with the help of hidden cameras.

Short documentary about Stuart, a cross-dressing dominatrix. This piece aims to look further into Stuart's identity as a man, woman, and subservient sex worker. The story follows him through one night's gig with a man from out of town.

A documentary that follows three women who perform via webcam to paying customers.

In post-9/11 New York City, an eclectic group of citizens find their lives entangled, personally, romantically, and sexually, at Shortbus, an underground Brooklyn salon infamous for its blend of art, music, politics, and carnality.

Three backpackers head to a Slovakian city that promises to meet their hedonistic expectations, with no idea of the hell that awaits them.

Some of Sin City's most hard-boiled citizens cross paths with a few of its more reviled inhabitants.

This docu-drama dives beneath the sensational headlines to unravel the truth about a murder case that rocked New Zealand and catapulted teenage dominatrix Renee Chignell and cricket umpire Peter Plumley Walker into the national consciousness.

Gudrun has modeled her amateur German terrorist group after the 1970s Red Army Faction (Baader-Meinhof Gang). She attempts to imitate her heroes by kidnapping the son of a wealthy industrialist and hopes to negotiate leftist demands from the father. When Gudrun’s not spouting leftist verses (including during a hilariously brilliant fuck session), she’s trying to convince her all-male gang to abandon their heterosexuality, which she believes is the result of mass delusion.

Maria, an unfortunate young woman, kills her rapist father in self-defense, and is later tried, sentenced, and shipped off to a woman's penitentiary where she and her fellow inmates are subjected to psychological and sexual abuse at the hands of a psychotic lesbian warden.

A prudish married couple feel put upon by the swingers living in their apartment building. One night, by accident, they discover a way to both rid themselves of the “perverts” down the hall and simultaneously realize their dream of opening a restaurant.

Single mother Diana struggles to provide for her child and pay for her college education. When she meets two dancers from a nearby gentlemen's club, Diana's convinced there's fast money to be made stripping.

Three Swedish girls are at boarding school and a bit bored with their lessons, so they travel to Hamburg to have a few adventures. Lil tries to get her teacher, who is staying with his girlfriend, around and the others have fun in the city's red light district. They want to spend the night with their sister, one of the Swedes, who supposedly works there as a secretary. Soon everything ends in turbulent entanglements...

Flamboyantly gay Austrian television reporter Bruno stirs up trouble with unsuspecting guests and large crowds through brutally frank interviews and painfully hilarious public displays of homosexuality.

Peter, a married psychotherapist, and Suzanne, a professional dominatrix, have been engaged in an affair of sensual dominance and submission in an S&M dungeon where they must abide by the rules. Now, those rules are about to be broken when they agree to see each other on the outside. As Peter becomes increasingly obsessed with the troubled Suzanne, they embark on a sordid psychosexual journey into their tortured pasts through their most carnal desires.

High-priced call girl Lee Churchill, is examining her life via therapy "sessions". Her double life is unknown to her parents, sister and "straight" man with whom she falls in love.

Alberta, a mousy young woman with the survival skills of a snail, loses cash that isn't hers, so she runs from her small town to Seattle where her old babysitter, Celene, lives - a dominatrix with a classy apartment and a life plan. She lets Alberta stay. Alberta gets a job as a checker at a supermarket and becomes fascinated with Celene's work.