Stephen Dwoskin

Before the Beginning (2015)

"Two independent filmmakers, who willingly practise self-fiction, are filming each other in order to communicate better. In spite of their differences in language and style, the film is mainly an attempt to imitate, or even to become, the other, which is d ...

Age Is... (2012)

Stephen Dwoskin's final film is a meditation on the subjective experience and cultural concepts of ageing. The film is an ode to the texture, the beauty, the singularity of aging faces and silhouettes, a hypnotic poem in the Dwoskin meaning of the term whi ...

Mom (2008)

A tribute to author's mother shortly after her death, at the age of 96. The film remembers her through excerpts from earlier footage and attempts to hold and capture the mysteriously elusive feelings and warm gestures she left behind, which still linger in ...

The Sun and the Moon (2008)

'The Sun and the Moon, a film fairy tale, is about two women's terrifying encounter with 'Otherness' in the form of a man, abject and monstrous, and for them to either to witness, accept or partake in his annihilation. All are caught in their own isolation ...

Ascolta! (2008)

Liu, crying, sings "Signore, ascolta!" Liu can bear it no more. She sinks to the ground, exhausted and sobbing. Puccini makes tears of joy and of sadness. Ascolta! was inspired by Puccini"s opera Turandot. A close-up of a girl who is deeply moved as she li ...

Nightshots (1, 2, 3) (2007)

The first three of a series of intriguingly personal and erotic engagements seen in the privacy of darkness and transformed by the iridescence of the night light. ...

Phone Strip (2007)

Short strip by Stephen Dwoskin. ...

Phone Portrait (2007)

More like sketches Phone Portrait and Phone Strip explore the moving image through the uniqueness of the most modern of technologies – the cellphone – that, though being modern, produces a near primitive and raw image reminiscent of the very first movi ...

Short Time (2006)

A summer in Beechdale Road. A meditation on the passage of time, the time in between things and the time spent together - and apart. The film was made to be screened in a loop, without credits. ...

I'll be Your Eyes, You'll Be Mine (2006)

Seeking in the archives of Robert Kramer, a detective, Keja Ho is looking for her deceased father. His ghostly presence haunts her search and motivates the singular dialogue between her family memories and friends. ...

Oblivion (2005)

Dad (2003)

An ode to Stephen Dwoskin's father. The film blends found family footage of the young and the ageing father. It takes the tiny gestures of daily life and turns them into the monumental moments of tenderness and respect. Part of trilogy of memoirs of loved ...

Grandpère's Pear (2003)

"My grandfather was a charming artist, and he would have acted if he had had an audience. In this film, taken from family images, it is a simple pear that is the object of his panache. ...

Dear Frances (in memoriam) (2003)

"Suddenly and sadly my dear friend Frances died. At that moment of loss I needed to hold on to her. The film is just that." – Stephen Dwoskin. ...

Another Time (2002)

A film about a man, an invisible man, perhaps immobile or displaced, trapped in solitude filling the intervals of reflection and desire. He resides in the tension of a modest and secluded space fixed with memories of another time, with other people passing ...

Some Friends (Apart) (2002)

A short and lyrical film about looking, and how that look shapes the relationship between those people whom we call friends; some gone, some found, but all apart. ...

Intoxicated By My Illness (2001)

Intoxicated by My Illness (in which images photographed by several people are extensively superimposed) loosely and dreamily tracks a phase in Dwoskin's recent life that took him from medical examination to intensive care. ...

Pain Is... (1997)

The film is just this kind wandering through the personal ways and whys of different kinds of pain in different kinds of people. The film searches through the many levels of pain and finds it in its unique position between disaster and pleasure. Pain is.. ...

Trying to Kiss the Moon (1994)

In this unique approach to the autobiographical film format, director Stephen Dwoskin pieces together home movies shot by his parents in New York City, a video letter recorded during the 1990 Gulf War by filmmaker Robert Kramer, and raw footage filmed by D ...

Vidéolettres / Videoletters (1991)

"Hi Steve" and "Dear Robert" exchanged between two filmmakers: Robert Kramer and Stephen Dwoskin. "The Videoletters strip away the formalities that had littered our work and thinking. Through the making of the 'video letters' we started to relearn and re-l ...

Face of Our Fear (1991)

A richly conceived essay about the evolving image of disability. Dwoskin begins with the declaration that the historically distorted images of people with disabilities constitute a "negation of selfhood". He then traces this concerted effort through two th ...

The Spirit of Brendan Behan (1990)

A film about the writing of Brendan Behan realised through three performers wandering through Dublin reciting extracts from his work. Together it tells of Behan's life and also prison, about executions,about the fear that sometimes penetrates the soul and ...

Face Anthea (1990)

"Either in its natural state or with its embellishments of makeup, jewels, and hairdos, nothing can restrain the imagination from the most forms of speculation. All the senses are concentrated in this one head: eyes, ears, nose, lips, tongue and the skin w ...

Further and Particular (1988)

An old man remembers the troubled relationship he had with his mother, the erotic games, and the phantasms in which she managed to attract him. The main line gives but a small idea of the film, of its erotic style, its choreographic dimension, its strange ...

Ballet Black (1986)

Stephen Dwoskin brings together members of the Ballet Negres dance company, founded in London in 1946. ...

Shadows from Light (1983)

Born in 1904, Brandt was a shy and enigmatic man who dominated British photography for decades. His early studies of class-divided Britain were followed by the postwar series of "distorted nudes", shot on beaches and inside rooms. The film is a fitting fin ...

Outside In (1981)

A personal film by experimental director Stephen Dwoskin. ...

Phoelix (1979)

An aged art connoisseur (Beaumont) and his young female neighbour (Coles), who has a job posing naked in a club, meet and exist in fantasy and reality. Although this raises certain much-discussed questions about the nature of representation, and about the ...

Open Door: The Other Cinema (1977)

Avant-garde appeal on behalf of and made by the adventurous leftist London cinema, The Other Cinema, using the facilities provided by the BBC community programme unit. ...

The Silent Cry (1977)

'The Silent Cry is a fictionalised narrative film, based on documentary facts and extracts of one English girl's memories and thoughts, all surrounded, and directed towards her particular dilemma. This dilemma can be summarized as her basic inability to ha ...

Central Bazaar (1976)

A group of strangers explore their fantasies over a period of five days. ...

Kleiner Vogel (1976)

The film questions the possible viewing positions with the girl; in other words, who and what is looking at whom? and is the girl alone or with another – or is the camera position that of voyeur or protagonist? The only way to figure it out is to spend ...

The Laboured Party (1975)

This amusing short features a real life Labour party canvasser who comes looking for Dwoskin (never realizing that he's the camera man), and instead is treated to the provocations and manipulations of the housemates. ...

Behindert (1974)

A portrait of a relationship between a physically disabled man and an able-bodied woman. ...

Death and Devil (1973)

Evolves around the rooms of a house as one of the main characters, Lisiska, is waiting and is studied in depth as she prepares herself for a meeting. The film attempts to display sexual barriers and misconceptions, and about the role-playing and the confus ...

Jesus Blood (1972)

A man walks towards the camera down the end of a street to the sound of 'Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet', a composition by Gavin Bryars based on a loop of an anonymous homeless man singing the song. The man's voice is progressively intensified by an inst ...

Dyn Amo (1972)

'Dyn Amo' is a 'drama' exploring the distinction between a person's self and his projection of that self to others; and it's a 'horror movie' tragically suggesting how a projection can become more substantial than the self behind it. Its subjects are role- ...

Dirty (1971)

DIRTY is the reincarnation of two girls, a bottle and one bed. Their bodies, hands and face expressions reach out in a refilm look. ...

Times For (1970)

An unfulfilled man renders himself to the unrealized sensuality of four women. In his drifting search, he fails and fades in the same loneliness as the women. ...

C-Film (1970)

Two women in a living room: smoking, playing cards, listening to the radio. As often in Dwoskin's films, the use of masks, make-up and costumes allows the characters to playfully transform themselves. Shot in colour film, C-film exuberates swinging London ...

To Tea (1970)

To Tea, made in Holland (at the house of the Dutch avant-garde filmmaker Franz Zwartjes), is a slowed 'Alice in Roomland'.A guide to sensual contact between two women. Their contact is arrived at through an arrangement of slow tactics. As the light of day ...

Me Myself and I (1969)

The beginning of the prevalent theme – or question – what keeps us apart, even when together? ...

Take Me (1969)

Short experimental film focusing on body paint and the female form. ...

Trixi (1969)

Trixi is Dwoskin's most convulsive version of his recurrent theme: the confrontation of a solitary girl with the camera. Shot in one continuous 8-hour session. Trixi records Beatrice Cordua's responses to the situation, from initial shyness, fear and withd ...

Moment (1968)

A static camera records, in one single continuous shot, a woman's face before, during and after orgasm. The act of looking and the limits of the film frame are highlighted in this intimate sexual episode with Tina Fraser. Artist Stephen Dwoskin presents a ...

Soliloquy (1967)

Featuring Joan Adler (who also appears in Chinese Checkers), Soliloquy is one of the four early Stephen Dwoskin films that were awarded the Solvey prize at the EXPRMNTL festival in Knokke, Belgium in 1967. "In Soliloquy a girl broods uncertainly over a fai ...

Chinese Checkers (1965)

His Oriental predator is at first clothed in black, her 'victim' in white; slowly the costumes change, the victim acquiring a veil of mourning, until finally - as if to underline the ambiguity and interchangeability of their respective roles - the colours ...

Naissant (1964)

Filmed in New York in 1964, completed in London 1967. ...

Alone (1964)

Images of a woman lying on a bed appearing to have a sexual fantasy for lack of anything else to do. ...

Asleep (1961)

Stephen Dwoskin's first film, made in New York. A woman's feet during a whole night of sleep contracted into four minutes. ...

Telescopic Intimacy (2022)

In their lyrical and philosophical video essay, "Telescopic Intimacy", Cristina Álvarez López and Adrian Martin explore the works of avant-garde filmmaker Stephen Dwoskin. Aesthetically captivating and conceptually interesting, Dwoskin's films focus on t ...

My Conversations on Film (2013)

This distinctly personal journey into the artistic possibilities of independent film is not to be missed. Jonas Mekas, Jean-Pierre Gorin, Robert Kramer and many other visionaries and mavericks of the silver screen – as well as a book seller, a critic and ...

Cinexpérimentaux #9: Stephen Dwoskin (2012)

Stephen Dwoskin was born in New York in 1939 and began making independent shorts there in 1961. In 1964 he followed his research work to London where he settled and participated in the founding of the London Filmmaker's Co-op. His experimental films, for w ...

The Sun and the Moon (2008)

'The Sun and the Moon, a film fairy tale, is about two women's terrifying encounter with 'Otherness' in the form of a man, abject and monstrous, and for them to either to witness, accept or partake in his annihilation. All are caught in their own isolation ...

Conversation Piece with Stephen Dwoskin (2005)

Shot in Brixton, London, in 2004, the film is originally a letter addressed to Dwoskin by its authors. It creates a unique space, movement and rhythm in which they develop his point of view on the evolution of cinema in the western world. ...

Birth of a Nation (1997)

Jonas Mekas assembles 160 portraits, appearances, and fleeting sketches of underground and independent filmmakers captured between 1955 and 1996. Fast-paced and archival in spirit, the film celebrates the avant-garde as its own "nation of cinema," a vital ...

Pain Is... (1997)

The film is just this kind wandering through the personal ways and whys of different kinds of pain in different kinds of people. The film searches through the many levels of pain and finds it in its unique position between disaster and pleasure. Pain is.. ...

The Cinema of Stephen Dwoskin (1984)

A exploration of the origin, theory, philosophy and themes of Stephen Dwoskin's films from 1963 to 1984. ...

Shadows from Light (1983)

Born in 1904, Brandt was a shy and enigmatic man who dominated British photography for decades. His early studies of class-divided Britain were followed by the postwar series of "distorted nudes", shot on beaches and inside rooms. The film is a fitting fin ...

Cinématon XIII (1981)

Reel 13 of Gérard Courant's on-going Cinematon series. ...

Cinématon n°121 : Stephen Dwoskin (1981)

Outside In (1981)

A personal film by experimental director Stephen Dwoskin. ...

Cinématon (1978)

Cinématon is a 156-hour long experimental film by French director Gérard Courant. It was the longest film ever released until 2011. Composed over 36 years from 1978 until 2006, it consists of a series of over 2,821 silent vignettes (cinématons), each 3 ...

Open Door: The Other Cinema (1977)

Avant-garde appeal on behalf of and made by the adventurous leftist London cinema, The Other Cinema, using the facilities provided by the BBC community programme unit. ...

Behindert (1974)

A portrait of a relationship between a physically disabled man and an able-bodied woman. ...

Heads (1969)

Includes 'portraits' of Marianne Faithfull, Thelonious Monk and 28 others, some known, some less so. ...