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.
Direction
Broomfield's deadpan presence lets subjects expose themselves.
Production
Raw 90s video aesthetic that refuses to aestheticize.
Director
Nick Broomfield
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Released during the 90s 'docu-sleaze' boom, it predates mainstream BDSM visibility by decades—Secretary and Fifty Shades hadn't normalized this discourse yet.
Pandora's Box was a real, operating Manhattan establishment; several mistresses later disputed Broomfield's portrayal of consent and editing choices.
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