After five grueling years of making TOPS & bottoms, a documentary about sadomasochism, filmmaker Cristine Richey is seriously considering a new career in children’s programming, but not before a night at the Genies, where her film is nominated for best feature-length doc of 1999.

Richey is not a stranger to the Genie shortlist. Her first documentary effort, In the Gutter and Other Good Places, landed the director the best documentary award for 1994. The topic of the one-hour film was dumpster pickers in Calgary. It is a far cry from TOPS & bottoms, a glimpse in to the wild world of s&m and the people who live much different alternative lifestyles.

Richey spent five years working on the 80-minute TOPS & bottoms. The idea for the film (once known to Playback readers as Dynamics of Power) came to Richey in 1992 while looking for an apartment in Toronto. It was at this time that she met a man who, over coffee, told her all about his life in s&m. It was a chance meeting later with the same man in the summer of 1994 that cemented her interest in making the film. He was dressed as a little girl at the time.

Shot on 16 mm with six different cinematographers, TOPS & bottoms takes its viewer on an rough ride through many a dank dungeon where many a client pays big money to be spanked and whipped and zapped by electric prods (yup, electric prods). The film examines not only s&m practices by professionals, who make a living at it, but also how we are all dominated each day in the places we least expect. It not only looks at the sexual aspects of domination between two people, but the broader theme of the domination of a people by its leader.

In making the disturbing film, Richey says that she was playing ‘a game of cat and mouse’ with her subjects, who were reluctant to let her document their lives (or that special s&m aspect of it), being an outsider to their subculture. She says that those she approached kept normal day jobs, in teaching, and even politics. Trying to keep a buffer zone, so as to not immerse herself in the world of s&m, Richey says that she tried to build up trust by showing copies of In the Gutter to prospective subjects to show that she could handle the subject sensitively. Over the span of five years, Richey says that making this film left a lasting effect on her and to cleanse her soul she is now seriously exploring the idea of making programming for children, although she is still in the earlier stages of development on various projects.

TOPS & bottoms premiered at the 1999 Toronto International Film Festival, selling out in just five hours. It has recently been invited to screen at the Palm Springs Film Festival in January.