Stephen Dwoskin Symposium

Stephen Dwoskin (1939-2012) was an internationally acclaimed filmmaker, director and producer. He co-founded the London Film Makers Co-Op (now LUX) at Better Books as well as the Independent Filmmakers’ Association in the 1970s (an organisation that paved the way for Channel 4) and The Other Cinema.

Inaugurating the opening of the Dwoskin archive at the University of Reading, this symposium will explore his historical importance as a key figure in independent film and his groundbreaking film work.

SCHEDULE

11.15am-11.30am

WELCOME - Dr Rachel Garfield and Ben Cook

11.30am-1pm

MORNING PANEL

Chair: Ben Cook, Director of LUX Artists' Moving Image

Dan Kidner, curator, writer and PhD candidate, University of Reading
To independent filmmakers: Stephen Dwoskin and "The International Free Cinema"

Dr Lucy Reynolds, writer and researcher in artists moving image
A Young American in London 

Henry K Miller, Independent researcher, contributor to Sight and Sound
The Lonely Crowd: Dwoskin, Durgnat, and the London Film-Makers Co-op

1pm-2pm

LUNCH

2pm-3pm

SCREENING: You, Me and Everyone We Know, curated by Will Fowler:

Some Friends (Apart) (2002) 25min

Me, myself and I (1967) 18min

Chinese Checkers (1963) 13min

3pm-3.30pm

BREAK

3.30pm-5pm

AFTERNOON PANEL

Chair: Dr Rachel Garfield, artist and Director of Postgraduate Studies at the University of Reading

Anthea Kennedy, filmmaker
Approaching Dwoskin: getting to know the filmmaker, his camera and his films

John Bradburn, Lecturer at Staffordshire University
The Camera as Philosophers Stone

Prof Patricia MacCormack, Professor of Continental Philosophy at Anglia Ruskin University, author of Cinesexuality
Evanescent Flesh: The Bound and Unbound Body in Dwoskin

Biographies

John Bradburn is an academic, journalist and filmmaker from Birmingham. His research focuses around investigations of subconscious mental states within cinema. This has lead to papers on the representation of mental illness experience at the Royal College of Psychiatry, articles on American Occult Filmmakers as well as experimental film and sound work. 

Anthea Kennedy studied fine art at Chelsea School of Art and Leeds Polytechnic and film at the Royal College of Art. Her films are concerned with history and memory and have been screened at international film festivals, galleries and other venues. She collaborated with Stephen Dwoskin as film editor and assistant director.

Dan Kidner is a freelance curator and writer. He was previously director of Picture This, Bristol (2011 - 2013), and co-director of City Projects, London (2004 - 2011). Over the past 10 years he has produced many artists’ films including Fulll Firearms by Emily Wardill (2011), Abyss by Knut Åsdam and The Empty Plan by Anja Kirschner and David Panos (both 2010). He has edited several books including most recently Working Together: British Film Collectives in the 1970s.

Henry K. Miller has written for the Guardian and Time Out, and is a regular contributor to Sight and Sound. He teaches film at the University of Cambridge and at Anglia Ruskin University. He is the editor of The Essential Raymond Durgnat, to be published later this year.

Lucy Reynolds is a writer, artist and curator of artists moving image. She presents talks on artists’ moving image at arts venues across the UK and runs the Moving Image pathway on the MRES: Art programme at Central St Martins School of Art. She has published extensively on artists' moving image work, more recent articles include: 'The Subject in Process: Material Equations in the Work of Carolee Schneemann and Annabel Nicolson,' in Bridget Crone (ed) The Sensible Stage: Staging and the Moving Image, Picture This publications, Bristol, 2012 and 'Maya Deren: Thresholds to the Imaginary', International Journal of Screendance,  Vol 3, Spring 2013. She is Features Editor of MIRAJ, the Moving Image Review & Arts Journal.

Professor Patricia MacCormack is Professor of Continental Philosophy at Anglia Ruskin University Cambridge. She is the author of Cinesexuality and Posthuman Ethics and the editor of Deleuze and The Schizoanalysis of Cinema and The Animal Catalyst: Toward Ahuman Theory. She has published extensively on perversion, cinesexuality, queer theory, horror film, ethics and transgression and has appeared on many productions from Redemption Films, the Nouveaux edition of Suspiria and Video Nasties: The Definitive Guide.

Organised by Rachel Garfield (University of Reading) and Ben Cook (LUX)