Virgin Machine

Dorothee Müller (Ina Blum) is a German journalist researching an article about the nature of romantic love—something she desperately needs, given her dysfunctional relationships with lover Bruno (Marcelo Uriona) and brother Heinz (Gad Klein). In the Oz of San Francisco, Dorothee finds exactly what she was looking for—and then some—thanks to the help of lesbian strip show barker Susie Sexpert (Susie Bright), drag king Ramona (Shelly Mars), and her mysteriously kinky neighbors (Cleo Dubois and Fakir Musafar). 

Part German Expressionist satire, part sapphic travelogue, Monika Treut’s Virgin Machine (Die Jungfrauenmaschine) is a seminal—and fiercely controversial—work of lesbian cinema that led Die Zeit to proclaim “films like Monika Treut’s are destroying cinema.”

2K restoration by the Hamburg Kinemathek.