The Pleasure of Rope
Bob Bentley's 2015 feature documentary on kinbaku, filmed backstage at rope events and featuring Japanese and Western rope artists.
The Pleasure of Rope is a feature documentary about kinbaku directed by Bob Bentley. The Movie Database lists it as an English-language film of about 90 minutes, released in the Netherlands on July 10, 2015; Yidio gives 89 minutes.
According to the synopsis in The Movie Database, Bentley goes backstage at rope events and into the private side of rope, collecting candid accounts from people for whom tying and being tied has become something close to a compulsion; the synopsis calls these accounts surprising and at times disturbing. Yidio’s description adds the film’s framing of the art: kinbaku, also called shibari, is presented as rooted in the medieval world, almost forgotten and then rediscovered in modern times, and grown from a niche of the BDSM scene into a popular passion for many people.
The cast list in The Movie Database names Bentley himself alongside rope artists including Bruce Esinem, Hajime Kinoko, Kazami Ranki, Osada Steve and Wykd Dave. Neither listing names a distributor, and no festival screening is documented in the sources consulted here.