In 1999 the Canadian director Cristine Richey released the documentary Tops & Bottoms: Sex, Power and Sadomasochism. It sat on the festival circuit and on public television at the turn of the century, an early film record aimed at consensual SM between partners. It does not parade BDSM as a line of isolated toys. It follows the enthusiast couple Robert and Mary Dante, and shows power exchange inside an adult relationship that people actually live.
Part of its value is the path from art cinema to a public broadcaster. In 1999 it premiered in the Perspectives Canada section of the Toronto International Film Festival, and the same year it played in the Midnight Madness section of the Cinefest Sudbury International Film Festival. In February 2000, TVOntario aired it as an episode of The View from Here. Dungeon dynamics moved from underground rumor into a documentary slot on public television. Canadian art film and educational TV treated sadomasochistic partners as a subject for a feature.
At the 20th Genie Awards in 2000 it was nominated for Best Feature Length Documentary. The Dante couple at the center, and a title that says sex, power, and sadomasochism outright, kept it on BDSM film lists. As a short file it records real partners, named power roles, and a public-television afterlife for consensual SM, without a horror wrapper. Other couple-focused kink documentaries, 1990s Canadian television about sexual culture, and safer-play educators were around in the same years. This film’s note is the concentration on one partnership.
