Dwoskin and Me: Halting the Flow of Time

In this article I discuss the three experimental autobiographical films that Stephen Dwoskin made between 1994 and 2003; Trying to kiss the moon (1994), Friends (apart) (2002) and Francis in Memorium (2003). I first met Dwoskin at the Royal College of Art film school in London where I was a student in the 1970s and he was a part-time tutor. We were both Jewish with very different personal histories and experiences, but after I left the RCA he became a close personal friend. As a disabled American ex-patriat man he spent most of his adult life looking at the world through a camera lens, filming his friends and lovers, building an archive of footage that form part of these films, supplemented by the extensive home-movie footage filmed by his father, Henry, a carpenter. My analysis of his films is therefore coloured by my own personal recollections of him.