f Grandfather’s pear: Some notes on Stephen Dwoskin’s archive and the role of auto/biography in his films

This article derives from the author’s research in the archive of artist and experimental film-maker Stephen Dwoskin (1939–2012). It represents the preliminary stages of a longer-term investigation and is a response to the specificity of Dwoskin’s work, its use of archival materials and its relation to the physical archive housed in the University of Reading. It emphasises the ‘autobiographical’ strand in Dwoskin’s filmography and offers readings of the films Trying to kiss the moon (1994) and Grandpère’s pear (2003). It proposes the usefulness of Dwoskin’s theory of ‘soft’ film-making, outlined in Film is... (1975), his study of international avant-garde cinema. To contextualise these late autobiographical films, the article also draws on the work of Dwoskin’s neighbour, friend, colleague and collaborator Laura Mulvey, in particular, the book Death 24x a second (2006), with its analysis of the relationship between the materiality of traditional film-making and the digital technology of the present.