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.
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.
A documentary that follows three women who perform via webcam to paying customers.
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.
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.
Sardu, master of the Theatre of the Macabre, and his assistant Ralphus run a show in which, under the guise of 'magic', they torture and murder people in front of their audience. But what the punters see as a trick is actually real.
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.
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.
A psychiatrist encourages his female patients to tell him their sexual problems, each as each relates her particular case, we see it in flashback.
Successful businessman Richard Clarke is bitten by a beautiful vampire and is plunged into the dark world of the supernatural. Richard very quickly realizes that being undead isn't all that it's cracked up to be.
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.
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.
Inspired by the Baader-Meinhof gang, a film about modern left Germans adopting the culture of extreme left-wing movements of the 1970s. East German dominatrix Gudrun leads a revolutionary gang of her own in Berlin. She has her men kidnap the son of a rich businessman in order to gain publicity. Claiming that heterosexuality is a social norm created to keep the people down, she forces her male minions to have sex with each other.
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.
Three backpackers head to a Slovakian city that promises to meet their hedonistic expectations, with no idea of the hell that awaits them.
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.
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.
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.