Documentary filmmaker Cristine Richey is at work on her latest documentary, Dynamics of Power, a look into the world of s&m. Richey won a Genie for her first doc, In the Gutter and Other Good Places, which followed the lives of three garbage pickers in Calgary.

The idea for Dynamics first came to the filmmaker a couple of years ago. While apartment-hunting in Toronto, she met a guy who later told her about his s&m life over a cup of coffee. Last summer, a chance meeting with the same man (it was hard to recognize him – he was dressed up as a little girl), was enough to convince Richey that she wanted to investigate the world of fetish.

Not being sensationalist is crucial to covering such a forbidden topic, says Richey, and she has focused on gaining the trust of her subjects.

Plans are to profile three or four people, consent pending. So far, Robert and Mary, a married couple who are respectively master and slave, have agreed. Sid, a dominatrix ‘with a lot of integrity,’ is on Richey’s list of hopefuls, as is a dominatrix Richey met with amid whips and chains in a red and black dungeon early this month.

At this stage, Richey says what is most interesting and most challenging is capturing the integrity and overall decency of these people. ‘The most difficult thing will be that, with Gutter, the characters were very sympathetic, and these people won’t be seen that way. But maybe in discovering their integrity people will be more open to them.’

In the increasing number of fetish clubs in Toronto and at National Leather Association events, such as ‘First Aid in the Dungeon’ (precautions to take when whipping someone), Richey has found an overwhelming sense of responsibility among what she calls a tribal community.

‘I’m discovering a new sense of self within these people, and it’s a good thing I’m seeing,’ she says.

Richey has been so successful at penetrating the s&m scene, she has been offered a dominatrix position at a new dungeon in town. She declined in favor of the film.

While visiting Amsterdam last fall with In the Gutter, Richey discovered she was in the mecca of s&m, so, camera in hand, she went a-hunting. No cameras allowed, but she did stay for the show and found a strange but familiar connection to home: the favored music for interludes between donkey and harness whipping acts was none other than our own Snowbird, Anne Murray.

Story editor on the documentary is Jack Morbin (editor of In the Gutter), Peter Walker is cinematographer, and Richey is directing and producing for tvontario’s The View From Here. So far, the Ontario Film Development Corporation and Telefilm Canada are providing development funding. Richey hopes to start full-swing into production in Toronto in May or June, shooting a combination of Hi-8, 16mm and Betacam.