My Day with Tarna

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).

Dominatrix Innana Justice, based in Paris, offers a behind-the-scenes look at BDSM—and, of course, at the role of a dominatrix. Spanning several chapters and featuring an ensemble of international sex workers and performers, this dynamic portrait explores a wide range of topics and practices related to BDSM, work, and community—from sessions to activism.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.