A Very British Brothel

A look at the daily life of an English brothel.

Filles de joie et de misère

Aufstand im Bordell - Frauenhandel um 1900

In the spring of 1902, Viennese working-class daughter Marie König runs away from her beating father and is lured into a high-class brothel by an agent. Instead of the promised self-determined life "with horse-drawn carriage rides and silk dresses", she experiences closed doors, violence and exploitation. Only after years of agony does Marie confide in the journalist Emil Bader, who makes the conditions in the brothel public and takes the owner, Regine Riehl, to court.

Paris Brothel

From the early 19th century 1946 Paris had many brothels that were tolerated and controlled by the state. These were sometimes rough places but more often were housed in richly designed buildings and serviced a clientèle from all walks of life. This documentary looks back at the Paris brothels through photographs, historians as well as memories from some who would frequent them as clients or work there as prostitutes.

Rua Guaicurus

A red-light district in Belo Horizonte, Brazil. The camera is admitted into a "running house". Love for sale looks like a routine, dreary assembly line exercise here, sometimes almost like a comedy.

The Pink Room

After selling herself at fourteen to a brothel inside her home town of Svay Pak, Mien takes an undesired path all over Cambodia for the remainder of her teenage life. At twenty, her path crosses with a group of people fighting to make a difference, bringing her long and onerous journey back to face where it all began. The Pink Room is an intertwined story of the heart-rending, epic battle to end sex slavery, from rescue to prevention, and experiencing first hand, the need to change not just individuals, but the communities they come from. Most documentaries on trafficking only bring awareness to the problem. This film bring awareness to the solutions.

Un mois chez les filles

The French female pioneer of immersion journalism, Maryse Choisy, who infiltrated in 1928 the prostitution underworld of Paris. Posing as a chambermaid, a lesbian bar dancer and more, she wrote a very successful and scandalous book about that avant-garde experience, and changed her mind about this world and these women's difficult condition.

Mustang: The House That Joe Built

A documentary about the girls of the Mustang Ranch, a legal brothel in Nevada.

Comizi d'amore

Pier Paolo Pasolini sets out to interview Italians about sex, apparently their least favorite thing to talk about in public: he asks children if they know where babies come from; asks old and young women if they support gender equality; asks both sexes if a woman's virginity still matters, what do they think of homosexuality, if divorce should be legal, or if they support the recent abolition of brothels. He interviews blue-collar workers, intellectuals, college students, rural farmers, the bourgeoisie, and every other kind of people, painting a vivid portrait of a rapidly-industrializing Italy, hanging between modernity and tradition — toward both of which Pasolini shows equal distrust.

Chicken Ranch

Documentary on the "Chicken Ranch," a legal Nevada brothel.

Louis Theroux: Louis and the Brothel

Louis stays with the residents of a soon to open brothel in Nevada for a few weeks.

Oczy diabła

Exploring the underground world of trafficking, where children are used for prostitution and organ harvesting. Patryk Vega interviews a mother who intends on selling her unborn child to traffickers.

Valon ja varjon huoneet

The prostitutes of Bombay live a nightmare life, yet there are some people who try to bring a little light into the darkness of the brothels. The film follows the lives of women in two brothels in the slums of Bombay. Some of the women are old, some are very young, but they have all been cheated into the business. And cheated out of life. For ten years now, Vinay, a social worker, has been trying to help them by saving them from AIDS and giving them some comfort. Although they are degraded and exploited outcasts, these women manage to retain some human dignity and cheerfulness. And some hope.

Bordellaffären från Makten och sanningen

"Makten och sanningen" - depicts the Geijer-affair or the Brothel-affair in 1977 where journalist Peter Bratt was forced to publish an apology in the newspaper Dagens Nyheter even though it turned out that everything he had previously written in the case was true. The Swedish Minister of Justice Lennart Geijer was accused of using under age escort girls provided by the Madam Doris Hopp in Stockholm. Geijer denied the charges..

Five Sex Rooms und eine Küche

Sex: My British Job

Nick Broomfield met Hsiao Hung Pai, a journalist who was working for the Guardian, when making his feature film 'Ghosts' (about the Morecambe Bay Chinese Cockle Pickers ). As an experiment and using the latest in undercover technology, Nick worked with Hsiao to make a Undercover film set in a Chinese brothel in Finchley. There are over 2000 'illegal' brothels in London,largely ignored by the police and the authorities, which employ 80% foreign nationals, mostly illegal, that are easily exploited by the brothel owners.

Venusia

Lisa, the brothel madam of the luxurious “Le Vénusia” in Geneva, and Lena, an artless prostitute as unpredictable as she is lazy, are filmed in the intimacy of a smoking room—where their relationship will combine tenderness and cruelty.

La Fille du garde-barrière

Based on the idea by Roland Topor (screenwriter of Roman Polanski's The Tenant), this very curious completely silent melodrama tells the story of Mona, who has left her father, the railway gatekeeper, after being raped on the train track. She is kidnapped and taken to a Parisian whorehouse. However, a disinherited prince, Dudu who tries to rescue her, is himself kidnapped and forced to serve as a male prostitute. The two captives meet there and fall in love. They are taken away by different rich people - he to an Arab "harem," she to a surgeon's home.

Wendy's Palace

Small town gal Wendy resorts to prostitution after moving to New York City. Wendy gets busted by corrupt vice cop Vince and winds up spending 90 days in jail. In the wake of finishing her sentence, Wendy decides to quit working the streets by owning and operating her own brothel instead.

Heisser Sex in Bangkok

Bowling buddies decide to check out the Bangkok night life.