Leopold von Sacher-Masoch

"We have a named for fantasy realized: nightmare". Adapted from Leopold Von Sacher-Masoch's "Venus in furs".

An enigmatic actress may have a hidden agenda when she auditions for a part in a misogynistic writer's play.

Film director Hyun encounters a mysterious woman and asks her to be his muse. Intrigued with his daring proposal, she accepts. Soon she invites him to her villa in the country to give him some isolated space to write his screenplay. But her masochistic acts slowly consume his desire and longing. He bears escalating humiliation and pain that are inflicted on him for the sake of being with her and ultimately signs over his life to her as her slave.

A visceral examination of the social contract between the governed and the government, the play explores Leopold von Sacher-Masoch's Six Houses of Bondage: Love, Money, Property, State, War and Death, with a seventh meditation on Revolutionary Change. "Seven Meditations..." was created in 1973 by Julian Beck, Judith Malina & Friends.

While still living in Amsterdam under his birth name 'Ian Kerkhof,' Aryan Kaganof co-penned the script for his friends Victor Nieuwenhuijs and Maartje Seyferth's debut feature Venus in Furs (1995), which is undoubtedly the most faithful cinematic adaptation of the S&M-themed Leopold von Sacher-Masoch novella of the same name. A number of years later after moving back to his homeland of South Africa, Kaganof directed his own tribute to Sacher-Masoch's classic work.

Female mistress and male slave caught in a circle of tension.

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.

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.

Based on the infamous novel by Leopold Sacher-Masoch this fine film follows the perverted passions of a young couple as Severin watches the beautiful Wanda writhing naked amongst furs. His disturbing peeping tomism triggers off a whirlpool of emotions due to a childhood episode which punishes voyeurism with pain.

A muscular hunk works selling shoes, but has a very overactive imagination. He falls asleep while reading "Venus in Furs" and dreams of Venus herself, speaking to him in poetry while he caresses her feet and waits on her as a servant. He also stares at women on the subway and imagines kissing and making love to them. After spending his day waiting on beautiful flirtatious women on his knees, he picks up Marna, a mysterious woman in the library, who invites him to her secluded mansion to join her assorted other guests for a weekend of sensual depravity.