Seduction: The Cruel Woman
Wanda is a dominatrix who runs a gallery in a building on the Hamburg waterfront, where audiences pay for the privilege of watching her humiliate her slaves. She is a business woman who smashes sexual stereotypes and social taboos with icy self-possession and an enigmatic smile. As artist she specializes in the staging of elaborate BDSM fantasies and her affairs transgress the usual boundaries of personal and professional life. Along the way she leaves her German lesbian lover, a shoe fetishist, for an American "trainee," and does more than step on the toes of the male performer who has broken the rules of the master-slave relationship by falling in love with her.
Monika Treut
Monika Treut
Elfi Mikesch
Elfi Mikesch
Leopold von Sacher-Masoch
Casts & Crew
Udo Kier
Mechthild Großmann
Sheila McLaughlin
Carola Regnier
Georgette Dee
Barbara Ossenkopp
Peter Weibel
Judith Flex
Daniela Ziegler
Also Directed by Monika Treut
Alex is 16, a misfit, a drop-out, a failure. She uses drugs; she cuts herself. She has been sent by her despairing adoptive mother to a farm in northern Germany. At first, Alex hates this remote place and the demanding job of looking after the horses. But under the tutelage of Nina, a 30-something taking a break from city life and her partner, Christine, Alex gradually comes to form a bond with the animals in her charge. Then Kathy arrives at the farm to take a holiday, bringing her own, beautiful horse with her. Alex takes an instant dislike to this privileged newcomer. Slowly, though, the barriers between the two are broken down and Kathy finds herself smitten by the streetwise and energetic Alex. The pair starts horsing around, larking about on the mudflats, until one weekend, when they’re alone at the farm, things spiral out of control.
Collaborative film made in Denmark.
Against the backdrop of Taiwan's turbulent presidential elections in 2004, TIGERWOMEN GROW WINGS portrays three women of different generations. Noted opera singer Hsieh Yueh-hsia, internationally renowned writer Li Ang, and 23-year-old film director Chen Yin-jung are featured in this documentary, which focuses on the changes taking place in the lives of women in Taiwan's youthful democracy.
Four women filmmakers examine sexuality in this anthology. Segment 1 is entitled "Let's Talk About Sex" and is the story of an aspiring actress whose day job is as a phone-sex operator. Tiring of listening to callers' fantasies, she finds a caller who is willing to listen to hers. Segment 2 is called "Taboo Palor" and tells the story of two lesbians, who, for variety, pick up a man for sex. He ends up getting more than he bargained for. Segment 3 is "Wonton Soup." Here an Australian-Chinese man tries to rekindle his affair with a Chinese woman by returning to their roots: both in the kitchen and in the bedroom.
A feature-length documentary on Yvonne Bezerra de Mello, award-winning artist and human-rights activist who has gained international recognition for her work with street children in Rio. The film recounts how a woman turned her back on a wealthy lifestyle, driven into action by the execution of 8 streetkids by military police in 1993. In subsequent years Yvonne's struggle to better the lives of endangered and abandoned children has led her to found "Projeto Uere" ("Children of Light") a radical project committed to protection and education of kids who live in the streets and slums of Rio which has brought her into conflict with Brazil's wealthy elite.
DIDN'T DO IT FOR LOVE is a documentary portrait of Eva Norvind, a.k.a. Mistress Ava Taurel, born Eva Johanne Chegodaieva Sakonskaya in Trondheim, Norway. The film follows Eva's many careers, from her time as a showgirl in Paris to becoming Mexico's Marilyn Monroe in the 1960s to establishing herself as New York's most famous dominatrix in the 1980s. Using clips from Norvind's Mexican films, stills from various periods, and interviews with friends, partners and family, Treut's documentary traces Eva's search for the wellspring of her obsessive and dark sexuality.
Bondage was made from, among other things, footage Monika Treut filmed in New York with women of the LSM(Lesbian Sex Mafia/ Lesbian Sado-Masochists). The statements of Carol form the core of the film. She speaks about her sexuality, her love of bondage, her desire for pain, which she shows in front of the camera. Her talking is interrupted by assembled impressions: intersections and subways pass through a chained female body
The late German film, theatre and opera director Schroeter is a self-proclaimed dinosaur from another age when people dreamed of ultimate freedom in film". Filmmaker Treut visits him on the set of his feature "DEUX" in Paris, and in Düsseldorf during the production of the opera "Norma". World premiere: FCMM October 2003. Screened at International Documentary Filmfestival Thessaloniki March 2004. Currently on the international filmfest circuit.
Monika Treut explores the worlds and thoughts of several female to male transgendered individuals. As with Treuts first film, Jungfrauenmaschine, Gendernauts, enters a minority sector of San Fransisco culture. The characters in this film have a lot to complain about, and they do. They are people whose physical appearance (female) does not match their inner sexual identity (male). The subject is pinpointed in the film independant of sexual orientation. Leave your conservative hats at the door, this is going to need your special attention.
A confrontation with Camille Paglia, the infamous author.
Also Directed by Elfi Mikesch
A portrait of five St. Petersburgians and their connection to The Hermitage.
It’s the early 1950s and little Franzi is growing up in the small Austrian town of Judenburg. Her oppressive family home is dominated by her feverish and mentally ill father, who is rigid and unpredictable. Her father, who regularly delivers halves of pork for the butcher, spent several years in the French Foreign Legion in Morocco, Algeria and Syria – a period which he partly glorifies but which still also haunts him. Franzi immerses herself in this world by looking at an abundance of beguiling yet disturbing photographs taken at the time by her father. Her own childish fantasy realm of fairy tales and picture books soon intermingle with nightmares as reality merges with imagination, war, horror and beauty.
Blue Distance is set in a train compartment. An androgynous woman thinks of letters a lady wrote to a gentleman about the necessity of separation and the desire for a casual encounter in the future. Another woman, a mirror image of the first, disrupts her reverie. After she leaves it is unknown whether the first woman's wish was about the man with whom an encounter will never take place or about the woman with whom it has just happened.
A woman reflects on her romantic relationship with a young moroccan years ago. Her daughter travels to Morocco, attempting to relive her mother's past.
Documentary about Austrian city Judenburg and its art scene.
Werner Schroeter was one of the most significant proponents of New German Cinema. Schroeter was diagnosed with cancer in 2006. In her film, Elfi Mikesch, who photographed a number of Schroeter’s films and who collaborated closely with him to create his vision, provides us with an intimate insight into Schroeter’s artistic output during the remaining four years of his life.
A young woman in New York.
A German short film
"I Often Think of Hawaii" should be a film for the living room, in which the daily fantasies and daily things have unique value.