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.

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

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

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).

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.

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.

Aurora Rumelin is happy because the noble writer Leopold Sacher-Masoch has asked for her hand. Little by little the marriage goes into crisis mainly because Leopold asks his wife to beat him before sexual relations and to treat him like a slave. Both spouses have lovers and, in the end, the marriage ends in divorce.

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.

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.

Lorna Green is a performer at a Lisbon nightclub who performs fictionalized acts that involve erotically charged sadomasochistic murders. As she begins to suffer violent, surreal nightmares, she starts to believe that she may be under mind control by a man who may be Satan incarnate.

As sadomasochistic yakuza enforcer Kakihara searches for his missing boss he comes across Ichi, a repressed and psychotic killer who may be able to inflict levels of pain that Kakihara has only dreamed of.

Marie, a teenage vagabond whose lust for life will eventually lead her to the bed of the mysterious Sandra. What begins as a blissful relationship soon takes a violent turn however, as Sandra tries to take full control over the innocent girl's life.

Eva, an upper-class housewife, frustratedly leaves her arrogant husband and decides to enter the call girl business. She lets Yvonne, a prostitute, teach her the basics and both set out for prey together, until Eva starts an affair with Chris, who turns out to be a call boy, as well. Consequently, she moves into his penthouse, large enough for both to offer their services separately.

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.

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.

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.