Monika Treut

Monika Treut is a German lesbian filmmaker and pioneer of queer and feminist cinema, known for Virgin Machine (Die Jungfrauenmaschine, 1988), Seduction: The Cruel Woman (Verführung: Die grausame Frau, 1985), and Gendernauts: A Journey Through Shifting Identities (1999). Her work from the mid-1980s onward engaged with female desire, BDSM, gender transgression, and trans identity at a time when virtually no mainstream filmmaker was doing so. She is one of the founding figures of explicitly queer art cinema and has worked between Germany and San Francisco throughout her career.