FORGET EVERYTHING, ADORE ME, AND ADORE MY FLESH: THE CINEMA OF MONIKA TREUT
Ever since the release of her debut feature SEDUCTION: THE CRUEL WOMAN in 1985, Hamburg-based filmmaker MONIKA TREUT has devoted herself to depicting and documenting queer lives on screen, exploring the mysteries and ambiguities of gender, and transgressing repressive sexual mores and ideas. Fiercely controversial in her native Germany – where Die Zeit once proclaimed that “films like Monika Treut’s are destroying cinema” – Treut found much more acceptance for her work in the burgeoning queer film festival and independent film scenes in America, leading to several decades-long collaborations with queer icons such as trans poet Max Wolf Valerio and “post-porn modernist” Annie Sprinkle. Treut’s films stand as fearless explorations of sex and gender that trace the more taboo and less documented arcs of queer history of the late 20th century.
Films in this Program
Monika Treut
Elfi Mikesch
84 minutes
Wanda (Mechthild Großmann) is a dominatrix who runs an S/M performance space in Hamburg where she stages elaborate sexual rituals for a discerning audience. Cruelty is her profession, but constructing traps for her lovers – including the lovelorn Gregor (Udo Kier), the naive and innocent Justine (Sheila McLaughlin), and the jaded Caren (Carola Regnier) – is her specialty. All know the rules of the game, but not all are willing to play their roles – but the show must go on…
“Sex may just be a passing fad. The age of tenderness is over. What is being presented: the world of sadomasochistic symbols, the rhythm of suffering, the pleasure of torment.” - Monika Treut & Elfi Mikesch
“This is S/M by Avedon, outfits by Dior.” - Film Comment
“Sex may just be a passing fad. The age of tenderness is over. What is being presented: the world of sadomasochistic symbols, the rhythm of suffering, the pleasure of torment.” - Monika Treut & Elfi Mikesch
“This is S/M by Avedon, outfits by Dior.” - Film Comment
Monika Treut
84 minutes
Dorothee Müller (Ina Blum) is a German journalist researching an article about the nature of romantic love – something she desperately needs, given her dysfunctional relationships with former lover Heinz (Gad Klein) and brother Bruno (Marcelo Uriona). In the Oz of San Francisco, Dorothee finds exactly what she was looking for – and then some – thanks to the help of lesbian strip show barker Susie Sexpert (Susie Bright), drag king Ramona (Shelly Mars), and her mysteriously kinky neighbors (Cleo Dubois and Fakir Musafar). When Dorothy surfaces like a dazzled tourist on the wilder shores of the city’s thriving lesbian community, she has discovered her true sexuality…and left some illusions behind. Part German Expressionist satire, part sapphic travelogue, VIRGIN MACHINE is a seminal – and fiercely controversial – work of lesbian cinema.
“If the film’s sexual politics relate Treut to Fassbinder – it’s like THE BITTER TEARS OF PETRA VON KANT without the angst and melodrama – the black-and-white look of the film harks to the velvet of Germany’s glory days, the expressionist films of the 20s.” – John Harkness, NOW
“If the film’s sexual politics relate Treut to Fassbinder – it’s like THE BITTER TEARS OF PETRA VON KANT without the angst and melodrama – the black-and-white look of the film harks to the velvet of Germany’s glory days, the expressionist films of the 20s.” – John Harkness, NOW
Monika Treut
82 minutes
Vicky (Shelley Kästner) is a German expat working as a waitress in the East Village while also dreaming of making it as an actor. She’ll have to give the performance of a lifetime when her stodgy father (Alfred Edel) hastily makes plans to visit her. As Vicky rushes to hide the aspects of her lifestyle that she doesn’t think he’ll approve of – namely, her gay roommate Ben (David Bronstein) and lesbian lover Lisa (Mary Lou Grailau) – only to become involved with a handsome stranger with a mysterious past (Michael Massee) in the process, Pops winds up tangled up with “post-porn modernist” Annie Sprinkle. A supremely kinky (yet surprisingly wholesome) sex comedy, MY FATHER IS COMING is also a loving tribute to the East Village and is notable for being one of the first feature films to prominently feature a trans man character.
“A cheerful cornucopia of kinkiness where genders and sexual preferences aren’t simply bent – they’re twisted into corkscrews.” – Stephen Holden, New York Times
“A cheerful cornucopia of kinkiness where genders and sexual preferences aren’t simply bent – they’re twisted into corkscrews.” – Stephen Holden, New York Times
Monika Treut
81 minutes
Eva Norvind was born Eva Johanne Chegodaieva Sakonskaja in 1944, the daughter of a Russian prince and a Finnish sculptor in Trondheim, Norway. DIDN’T DO IT FOR LOVE traces the many stages of her unbelievable life story: from her early success as a showgirl in Paris to her transformation into Mexico’s Marilyn Monroe in the 1960s, her subsequent career as a journalist in the 1970s, and culminating in her establishing herself as New York’s most famous and business-savvy dominatrix in the 1980s. DIDN’T DO IT FOR LOVE is an odyssey through the wilderness of sexuality, capturing Eva’s search for the wellspring of her obsessive drive to dominate.
“Treut has always aimed her camera at the front lines of the sexual avant-garde. But with her latest documentary she’s managed to leap across the socio-sexual battlefield as never before. Armed with more present lives than Shirley MacLaine has past ones, Norvind is as eloquent as she is paradoxical.” – David Ehrenstein, New Times
“Treut has always aimed her camera at the front lines of the sexual avant-garde. But with her latest documentary she’s managed to leap across the socio-sexual battlefield as never before. Armed with more present lives than Shirley MacLaine has past ones, Norvind is as eloquent as she is paradoxical.” – David Ehrenstein, New Times
