Abstract/Summary

Stephen Dwoskin and Raymond Durgnat first met in 1966. Both taught in art schools, Dwoskin at the London College of Printing, Durgnat at St Martin's, and both were early members of the London Film-Makers' Co-op (LFMC), founded that autumn. Durgnat first saw Dwoskin's films during the Co-op's inaugural 'Spontaneous Festival of Underground Movies', which was staged at the Jeanetta Cochrane Theatre - attached to another art school, the Central - and promoted by Durgnat in the newly launched underground paper IT. The following summer Durgnat published the first substantial article on Dwoskin, 'Dwoskin's dream-films', in the second issue of the LFMC's journal Cinim, which Dwoskin designed. The moment is freighted with countercultural mystique. But the encounter of Dwoskin and Durgnat took place in the margins of, or in unfamiliar incarnations of, these much attended-to sites and institutions, and their friendship developed apart from them. While Dwoskin's relationship with the LFMC and with the funding bodies which began to support artists' films in the 1970s was never easy, he had the support of some of the writers grouped around Screen, including Laura Mulvey and Paul Willemen. Durgnat, however, was persona non grata: 'They're very possessive about me now, though, Ray', Dwoskin told him in an interview published in 1984, when they were both teaching at the Royal College of Art. 'They don't want heretics like you writing about me.'1 Nonetheless, Durgnat's perspective on his work was one that Dwoskin to some extent endorsed, and the two of them collaborated on a film project whose theme may have been inspired by the LFMC's chaotic early years.