Part of Experimenta focus: Stephen Dwoskin, a series of film screenings and talks at the BFI Southbank from 1-24 February
The Sun and the Moon + intro by writer Paul Clinton
Thursday 24 February 2022 18:20 NFT3
Stephen Dwoskin’s late masterpiece is distantly inspired by the Beauty and the Beast tale.
- Director – Stephen Dwoskin
- With Beatrice Cordua, Stephen Dwoskin, Helga Wretman
- UK 2008. 59min. Digital
Dwoskin began as an underground filmmaker, and ended his career as one. Distantly inspired by Beauty and the Beast, The Sun and the Moon features Dwoskin as the Beast, all but confined to his bed and hooked up to a breathing machine, opposite performance artist and stunt performer Helga Wretman, and dancer Beatrice ‘Trixie’ Cordua (Dwoskin’s muse of many years). The high point of Dwoskin’s late period, the film was described by scholar Raymond Bellour as an ‘absolute masterpiece’.
+ Me Myself and I
Experimenta focus: Stephen Dwoskin season
A unique and challenging filmmaker whose themes include disability, sexuality, diaspora, and memory.
Stephen Dwoskin arrived in London from New York in 1964, aged 25, with a trunk of 16mm films shot in the milieu of Andy Warhol and Jonas Mekas. He became known for a series of films in which the camera’s unblinking gaze is returned by his female subjects. Laura Mulvey wrote that he ‘opened a completely new perspective for me on cinematic voyeurism’. In the mid-70s, Dwoskin turned his gaze on his own body, disabled in childhood by polio, before making a number of personal documentaries about disability and diaspora. In the 2000s, with his mobility severely impaired, he embraced the possibilities of digital technology to return to the underground and the erotic obsessions that powered his extraordinary 50-year career.
Rachel Garfield and Henry K Miller, co-programmers
For details of the entire programme, please visit the Experimenta focus: Stephen Dwoskin page.
