Venus In Fur

THE STORY: Thomas, a beleaguered playwright/director, is desperate to find an actress to play Vanda, the female lead in his adaptation of the classic sadomasochistic tale Venus in Fur . Into his empty audition room walks a vulgar and equally

Emberley documents the 1980s confrontations between animal rights activists and native peoples that pitted Lynx, the organization responsible for the high-profile anti-fur ads in Great Britain, against Inuit and Dene societies' claims for a livelihood based on the selling and trading, consumption and production of animal fur. From colonial fur trading to twentieth-century globalization of the fur industry, Emberley analyzes the cultural, political, material, and libidinal values ascribed to fur.

Leopold von Sacher-Masoch was born in Lemberg, Austrian Galicia, on January 27, 1836. He studied jurisprudence at Prague and Graz, and in 1857 became a teacher at the latter university. He published several historical works, but soon gave up his academic career to devote himself wholly to literature. For a number of years he edited the international review, Auf der Hohe, at Leipzig, but later removed to Paris, for he was always strongly Francophile. His last years he spent at Lindheim in Hesse, Germany, where he died on March 9, 1895. In 1873 he married Aurora von Rumelin, who wrote a number of novels under the pseudonym of Wanda von Dunajew, which it is interesting to note is the name of the heroine of Venus in Furs. Her sensational memoirs which have been the cause of considerable controversy were published in 1906. During his career as writer an endless number of works poured from Sacher-Masoch's pen. Many of these were works of ephemeral journalism, and some of them unfortunately pure sensationalism, for economic necessity forced him to turn his pen to unworthy ends. There is, however, a residue among his works which has a distinct literary and even greater psychological value. His principal literary ambition was never completely fulfilled. It was a somewhat programmatic plan to give a picture of contemporary life in all its various aspects and interrelations under the general title of the Heritage of Cain. This idea was probably derived from Balzac's Comedie Humaine. The whole was to be divided into six subdivisions with the general titlesLove, Property, Money, The State, War, and Death. Each of these divisions in its turn consisted of six novels, of which the last was intended to summarize the author's conclusions and to present his solution for the problems set in the others. This extensive plan remained unachieved, and only the first two parts, Love and Property, were completed. Of the other sections only fragments remain. The present novel, Venus in Furs, forms the fifth in the series, Love.

Enigmatic actress Vanda Jordan appears unannounced for an audition with director Thomas Novachek. She's determined to land the leading role in his new production – despite seeming wrong for the part. The director is weary of auditioning a string of other actors, but agrees to see her, and is drawn quickly in to her act. As Novachek reads the lines of the male character in his play - Venus in Furs by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, the Austrian author who gave his name to masochism - it becomes a play within a play. The audience is caught between what is 'real' and what is 'acted'. Venus in Fur is an intoxicating dark comedy of desire, fantasy and the innate love of fur. An exploration of gender roles and sexuality, in which desire twists and turns in on itself, Venus in Fur is also a witty, unsettling look at the art of acting-onstage and off. Venus in Fur has been produced all over America and all over the world, and was turned into a film by Roman Polanski that premiered in Cgender annes in 2013.

Fur Nation traces the interwoven relationships between sexuality, national identity, and colonialism. Chantal Nadeau shows how Canada, a white settler colony, bases its existence and its nationhood on a complex sexual economy based on women wrapped in fur. Nadeau traces the centrality of fur through a series of intriguing case studies, including: * Hollywood's take on the 330 year history of the Hudson Bay Company, founded to exploit Canada's rich fur resources * the life of a postwar fur fashion photographer * a 1950s musical called Fur Lady * the battle between Brigitte Bardot's anti-fur activists and the fur industry. Nadeau highlights the connection between 'fur ladies' - women wearing, exploiting or promoting furs - and the beaver, symbol of Canada and nature's master builder. She shows how, in postcolonial Canada, the nation is sexualised around female reproduction and fur, which is both a crucial factor in economic development, and a powerful symbol through which the nation itself is conceived and commodified. Fur Nation demonstrates that, for Canada, fur really is the fabric of a nation.

A group of impoverished artists living in France stage the death of a friend to increase the value of his paintings and then must engage in cross-dressing, deception, and romantic intrigue in order to make their plot succeed.

Contains an essay on the psychology and origins of masochism called Coldness and cruelty by G Deleuze and the novel Venus in furs by L von Sacher-Masoch.

When the rich and well-connected Raoule de Vénérande becomes enamored of Jacques Silvert, a poor young man who makes artificial flowers for a living, she turns him into her mistress and eventually into her wife. Raoule's suitor, a cigar-smoking former hussar officer, becomes an accomplice in the complications that ensue.