By Liam Heitmann-Ryce-LeMercier 

When producer, writer and director Monika Treut casts her mind back to 1984 in West Germany, during the production of her BDSM-centric queer classic Verführung: Die grausame Frau (Seduction: The Cruel Woman), she does not recall the period as a particularly open-minded one.

Referring to lack of visibility of queer communities before the fall of the Wall, she says, “I thought it was pretty grim in those days, since we were still living in the Cold War. The gay and lesbian movement had just started in the late ‘70s, pretty much, and it took a while until it really transmitted into filmmaking.”

Co-directed by Treut and fellow pioneer of queer German cinema Elfi Mikesch, Verführung was groundbreaking in its depiction of sadomasochism and BDSM subcultures. Presenting an empowered female dominatrix – who, in her plush Hamburg gallery, stages extravagant BDSM rituals of domination and sexual humiliation for a paying audience – the film was a lightning rod for controversy upon release in 1985.

“We had a lot of problems with the production of the film,” Treut says. “We had tried to get funding from the West German government, and it was turned down by the Minister of the Interior. He was a very right-wing person, and he was also responsible for police and border control, and he really disliked our script.”

Unable to simply wait for the governmental to soften their stance on the script, Treut sourced the film’s budget from other federal funding agencies in her hometown, Hamburg. At its core, Treut and Mikesch were driven by their shared desire to place an independent woman at the centre of the narrative – in particular, within the then unexplored world of BDSM.

Yet, Treut admits that the desire to make Verführung was not one driven by a political motive. “We were just really into the subject, pretty much!” she admits. “We were inspired by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch’s novel Venus in Furs, which is almost written like a theatre piece. It deals a lot with colours and appears with, kind of, stage directions, so we were really into taking ideas from the novel and rewriting it in our script.”

The book’s original protagonist switches careers and genders in the finished script: Gregor, the male theatre director of the book, becomes Wanda, the dominatrix gallery owner played by Mechthild Grossman in the film. During production, Treut and Mikesch had no idea how sensitive contemporary society would be to the taboo subjects explored onscreen.

The film was banned at the 1985 Toronto Film Festival, earning the rather notorious distinction as the only film to be targeted by the organisation’s board of censorship. Thankfully, the festival’s programmer that year, feminist film professor Kay Armitage, stepped forward to alter the fate of Verführung.

“She had to write almost a thesis to the board of censorship, so the film could be screened at the festival,” Treut reflects with some amazement. “Through this film, they got finally rid of the board of censorship altogether. So, in those days, the film was quite a weapon for free-thinkers – for feminists, for left-leaning artists – to fight. I think Effie and I were quite proud that this little, no-budget, independent film was so instrumental for the festival as well.”

However, back in the filmmakers’ native Germany, Verführung remained a hotly contested release. Queer circles embraced its frank depictions of same-sex female desire, while mainstream critics decried its confronting focus on sadomasochism.

As such, the film was banned in Germany for 18 years after its original release. While it could see the occasional screening at an underground cinema, Verführung  was forbidden from being broadcast on television and secured its place on a list of films considered dangerous to young viewers.

Treut, of course, wears this rejection as a badge of pride. “We were in a good group of films!” she says of the other titles similarly banned in Germany at the time. “It was films by David Cronenberg who were listed there; really beautiful films from the world of art house. In fact, it showed us that this film had an impact.”

Looking back on over forty years of artistic – and personal – growth in the years since the making of Verführung, Treut shares that there has never been a master plan to her body of work. Speaking for herself and Mikesch, she even says that she dislikes the concept of a ‘career’.

“We just live our lives and get inspired,” she explains brightly, “and then we try to develop the next project. So, in our case – maybe with my case, in particular – I had the image of being a ‘cruel woman’ myself, and so it wasn't really steering away [from that].”

However she views it herself, Treut’s body of work is enormous – and an important addition to the culture of queer filmmaking and same-sex representation. Her contributions to LGBTQ+ cinema were celebrated in 2017 with the Special Teddy Award, as a pioneer not only in lesbian film but also in German-language independent cinema.

“It was really a beautiful situation,” she remembers of that year’s ceremony, which featured a video montage of all of her earlier films. “That was also a nice opportunity to look back, and it was really wonderful support that the work was recognised by my community.”

The wider recognition this special award gave Treut, she reflects, was a great step toward becoming established as one of the leading avantgarde queer filmmakers in Germany. From being able to find stronger support for her future projects, and even being invited to more queer film festivals, Treut says, “I'm really happy and grateful for this award.”

Treut has experienced, first-hand, the importance of queer film prizes such as the TEDDY AWARD. On the whole, she regards the most immediate benefit, naturally, as exposure. Treut recalls an article from trade paper Variety, discussing her second feature film Die Jungfrauenmaschine (The Virgin Machine) in 1988. Presented at the Frameline queer film festival in San Francisco, Treut recalls the article proposing that the film was very original, certainly, but questioned whether it could cross over to a mainstream audience.

“So that was in the '80s,” she muses, “when people were thinking, ‘Okay, we have [queer] films that are just in one little niche area, and mainstream audiences would not go for it at all.’ I think this has changed quite a bit. It's still the case that we have queer films, but we have a much broader way of being seen by much more a bigger variety of people.”

With over forty years of filmmaking experience behind her, Monika Treut looks toward the next generation of queer filmmakers with one simple, strong piece of advice: “Don't take no for an answer – especially not from funding bodies! Sometimes I even thought, the more resistance there is to a certain project, the more important it is to follow through with it.”