quarterly pdf - Anthology Film Archives

ASLEEP
EARLY SHORT FILMS:
ALONE 1963, 13 min, 16mm, b&w
ASLEEP 1961, 4 min, 16mm, b&w
CHINESE CHECKERS 1964, 13 min, 16mm, b&w
NAISSANT 1967, 14 min, 16mm, b&w
SOLILOQUY 1964, 8 min, 16mm
ME MYSELF AND I 1967, 18 min, 16mm, b&w
DIRTY 1967, 10 min, 16mm, b&w
Total running time: ca. 85 min.
–Fri, March 15 at 7:00 and
Wed, March 20 at 9:15.
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
TRIXI
1969, 30 min, 16mm
“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 withdrawal through
teasing and posturing to naked surrender and final
exhaustion.” –Tony Rayns
&
TIMES FOR
1970, 80 min, 16mm
“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. The
film is the reality and a metaphor for the intensities of
sexual experience.” –S.D.
–Fri, March 15 at 9:00 and
Tues, March 19 at 6:45.
8
RETROSPECTIVES
BEHINDERT
KISSING THE MOON: FILMS AND VIDEOS BY STEPHEN DWOSKIN
March 15-24
“Looking is a marvelous thing, and looking is what cinema is about.” –Stephen Dwoskin
This long-awaited retrospective by Brooklyn-born filmmaker, painter, and writer Stephen Dwoskin – who spent most of his adult life in London until his death this past June at the age
of 73 – pays homage to an artist who left behind an extensive legacy of unique and uncompromising works, many involving his long struggle with polio, which he contracted when he
was 9. Dwoskin’s intensely personal and daring works span more than five decades and include over fifty short works and features shot on both film and video.
Dwoskin attended art classes under Willem De Kooning and Josef Albers in NYC and soon became part of the New York underground scene that included Robert Frank, Allen Ginsberg,
and Andy Warhol, among others. Dwoskin moved from New York to London in 1964, where he became one of the founders of the London Film-makers’ Cooperative and a strong
supporter of the independent cinema movement in the U.K. In 1975, Dwoskin completed and published his book FILM IS…, described by J. Hoberman as an “impassioned, programmatically
cosmopolitan, personal history of avant-garde cinema.”
Anthology’s series spans Dwoskin’s long career, including his early short works and his seminal films of the 60s & 70s (such as TRIXI, DYN AMO, and CENTRAL BAZAAR), many of which
highlight his investigation of the gaze between filmmaker and performer and his fascination with the act of looking. In his later works, the subject matter becomes increasingly autobiographical,
while in the most recent videos, including his final work, AGE IS…, completed shortly before he passed away, Dwoskin confronts the deformity of his body, his dependency on
medical apparatuses, and his sexual encounters with women. Dwoskin’s cinema, generally labeled as ‘personal’ despite its strong subjectivity, transcends the specifics of his condition,
serving as a mirror that reflects every individual’s life – their limitations as well as their right to desire the impossible, to kiss the moon.
The retrospective has been curated by Andrea Monti, who also wrote the introduction above, and is co-presented by LUX Distribution and the Estate of Stephen Dwoskin.
Special thanks to Rachel Garfield (Estate of Stephen Dwoskin) and Mike Sperlinger & Gil Leung (LUX), as well as to Antoine Barraud & Vincent Wang (House on Fire Productions), Elle Burchill (Microscope
Gallery), Thierry Fourreau, William Fowler (BFI), Marie-Anne Guerin, and Anthea Kennedy.
Additional works by Stephen Dwoskin will be presented at Microscope Gallery in Brooklyn, in conjunction with this series. For more info, please visit: www.microscopegallery.com
DYN AMO
1972, 120 min, 16mm
“A ‘drama’ exploring the distinction between a person’s
self and his projection of that self to others; and…a ‘horror
movie’ tragically suggesting how a projection can become
more substantial than the self behind it. Its subjects are
role-playing (especially sexual role-playing), and the
masochism of playing a role that conforms to others’
exploitative interests.” –Tony Rayns
–Sat, March 16 at 4:30 and
Wed, March 20 at 6:45.
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
BEHINDERT
1974, 96 min, 16mm-to-digital video
“This is Dwoskin’s masterpiece. Indeed, I have come to
regard it as the one of the greatest works in cinema history.
[…] Like many of Dwoskin’s pieces, it is a reflection upon
his physical condition – the title could be translated as
‘hindered’ or even ‘handicapped’, hence ‘disabled’ – and
the strains it poses on his exchanges with an able-bodied
lover. But this is as far from a ‘social problem’ or ‘disease
of the week’ telemovie as can possibly be imagined – as
the perfectly judged long takes, coupled with the relentless
drone-score by Gavin Bryars, attest. BEHINDERT remains
Dwoskin’s most daring and artistically successful attempt
to splice his ‘first person’ mode of cinema with a staged
fiction – creating a kind of cubistic complexity from the
constantly shuffled perspectives.” –Adrian Martin, FILM
QUARTERLY
–Sat, March 16 at 7:00, Tues, March 19 at
9:15, and Sat, March 23 at 9:15.
DYN AMO
AGE IS…
2011, 75 min, digital video
Dwoskin’s final film is a meditation on the subjective experience
and cultural concepts of aging. The film is an ode to the texture,
the beauty, the singularity of aging faces and silhouettes.
“Age is a question, a fear, something that may calm you too, but
first of all it’s a way of looking. Other people looking at you and
you looking at other people. It’s words that qualify you, official
letters that classify you. Age gets measured by an ellipse, in the
photos of a bygone era, the rediscovery of old films, the existence
of an archive. Those are the places that I wish to explore,
like the memory of a path. Unfortunately, age also means loss.
The loss of things, people, friends. You become very lonely. That’s
maybe one of the reasons why I want to ask my friends to shoot
some images.” –S.D.
–Sat, March 16 at 9:15, Thurs, March 21 at
7:00, and Sun, March 24 at 6:45.
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
CENTRAL BAZAAR
1976, 156 min, 16mm. New print courtesy of the BFI!
“[CENTRAL BAZAAR] was reduced to [156 minutes] from fifteen
hours of footage Dwoskin shot with a group of volunteers
adventurous to act out their erotic fantasies. […] Theatre of life,
costumes, sexes, colors, lips, reality, and fantasy mix and reveal
themselves, intensified by Dwoskin’s obsessive camera eye, as
he picks out, watches, stops on faces, details, sustains, doesn’t
go away; the face is trapped, recorded. But there is no forcing,
no rape of the camera in Dwoskin. It’s gentleness itself, it’s an
intelligence that is gentle and unimposing.” –Jonas Mekas
–Sun, March 17 at 3:30 and
Sat, March 23 at 6:00.