The 14 films

A woman hums as she wanders calmly around in a dressing gown. This quiet scene gradually transforms into a magnificent moving painting. Dwoskin, both painter and filmmaker, uses his model as a support: while seeming to conceal her body beneath layers of paint, he succeeds, through the camera, in capturing her inner being.

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

“DIRTY was originally shot in 1965. The footage was found in a very bad state and ‘restored’ with all marks, breaks, dirt, etc. deliberately left in place. But this is not the only thing that makes this a ‘dirty’ film; we see two almost naked women in a bed, first drinking from a bottle, then playing with it and ultimately engaging in erotic play. The dirt marks, the grainy texture of the image and the breakdown of the continuity of the action give the whole film the quality of a highly charged erotic memory. It creates the effect of a dreamlike recalling of a scene with the dreamer's freedom to re-run or pause on particular gestures and freeze certain privileged moments such as the caress of a hand, the bounce of a breast, a look, etc. The film becomes an erotic daydream, a play with sensual images retained from a scene witnessed sometime in the past.” (Artificial Eye)

It is quite revealing how complex the simple form is. Shot one to one, a girl is confronted with nothing more than her thoughts. In the period of watching her (while she is looking at you) her expressions and movements turn into a ‘mirror’ for the viewer to experience his or herself. The experience is solely emotive between you and her, and occurs in “real” time. (Stephen Dwoskin)

An ode to my father, and perhaps to all fathers. Called a “moving painting” by my sister, 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. (Stephen Dwoskin)

“My grandfather was a charming performer and would have acted if he had had an audience. In this film, drawn from family footage, a simple pear becomes the object of his flair.” (Stephen Dwoskin)

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)

The film is just this kind wandering through the personal ways and whys of different kinds of pain in different kinds of people. Far from the academic and the medical, the film questions this phenomenon of pain. The film searches through the many levels of pain and finds it in its unique position between disaster and pleasure. Pain is... thus plunges us instantly into the midst of controversy and the unknown.

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. Mostly it is a reverie about erotic fantasy — especially the excruciating, poignant ambiguity of bodily sensation strung out between intense pain and exquisite pleasure, between the figures of the nurse, who might be imagined as a bondage mistress, and the bondage mistress, who touches the ‘dominated’ body in the most tender way imaginable. Dwoskin periodically overlays known ‘movie music’ in order to ironically foreground his own ‘self dramatisation’, all the while drawing us into a rare and precious intimacy in extremis.

The action of the film 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 confusion around the whole question of sexual and sensual involvement. The essence is the confrontation with self-deception, lies and the real fear of contact with both sexes.

Based on the German playwright Frank Wedekind's play Tod Und Teufel. (Stephen Dwoskin)

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 which covers all with its network of vibrating nerves. One imagines the senses, the counterpart of our own, ready to respond with all the various moods, suggestions and agreements. Through the eyes alone, when placed in contact with our own, a visual dialogue and interplay is embarked upon. And when the lips, two bodies fitting together in perfect harmony, break into a smile, they invite further exploration. Then, with the engagement of time, this dialogue shifts from speculation to realization. The face transforms from its abstract suggestiveness to the singular projection of seduction. It is no longer anyones face; it is the face of one particular person. (Stephen Dwoskin)

The main intention of BEHINDERT is to express some of the subjective perspectives within the social/personal confinements of a personal relationship, as seen from the point of view of the physically disabled person. This position was taken for two principal reasons: to eliminate or reduce the “objectivity and sympathy” views normally given to the subject; and to try to deal with the personal and emotional entanglements that the (or a) disabled person encounters in the so-called “normal social/personal” areas of life. The mere mention of a film concerned with the subject of physical disability conjures up preconceived notions and images as to the type of film it is. It is put aside as a medical/social document of little importance, particularly by film people who think of films as “political,” “narrative,” “entertainment,” “poetic,” or “structural.” This film is about the physically normal and disabled in confrontation, but not literal relations. It is a documentary without being one. The content lies beneath the film. The material is treated subjectively, and crosses fiction with realistic documents, without a clear distinction.

A physically disabled man (Stephen Dwoskin) and able-bodied woman (Carola Regnier) confront the difficulties of a lasting relationship together. Their story is told through image and sound with a minimum of dialogue. Dwoskin shoots close up and lets the camera explore a persons face for several minutes. While this may sound static, the film is in fact an unsentimental, totally believable drama of personalities, an intense, intimate portrait of emotions as they grow, transform, peak, and die.

“The film is a documentary without being one. The content lies beneath the film, going into many areas. The material is treated subjectively, and crosses fiction with realistic documents, without a clear distinction.” (Stephen Dwoskin)

“Dwoskin films his everyday surroundings and offers a filmed diary, a chronicle he seems always to have at hand. Most of the time he appears in front of the camera (in) while, filmed by someone else (outside), he directs the scene. He does not simply display his disabled body, because he is constantly playing with it. Often silent, through its inertia, slowness and difficulty moving within the frame, its instability and awkwardness, the body becomes genuinely burlesque. Built from very short scenes, Outside In is the fiction of an off-balance body that threatens or joyfully disrupts the order of a scene.” (Charles Tesson, Cahiers du cinéma no. 333)

This autobiography of a film maker is unique of its kind. Without chronology, the film is made up of fragments of home movies shot by his father and mother during his childhood in New York, film extracts that Dwoskin himself shot in London, of a sequence taken from an interview, of a video letter sent by Robert Kramer during the war in Iraq and of raw footage shot from his wheelchair. We thus feel awkward watching these home movies, especially the first part in which we see the child running around, jumping, sometimes falling flat on his face. A somewhat morbid suspense settles: we expect the trembling 8mm pictures to show the misfortune that strikes Dwoskin. Nevertheless the film does not dwell on self-pity: rapidly, the heros vitality following his accident, his sneering smile imposes itself. And it seems to show that shackled by destiny, Dwoskin yet shows even more ambition, rage, desire (for cinema, painting and women) and sense of utopia. To the point where he tries to kiss the moon. (Edouard Waintrop, Libération)

Lost dreams is made out of those little remnants of images, from a single glance to a detailed moment, of those women from youth's love and young dreams. They are woven together, like fragments of the mind, and from the ends of film to the corners of the frame, into a memory of them. They are once again embraced and, if only briefly, poetically honoured.