Steve Dwoskin was born in 1939 in Brooklyn, New York City. He contracted polio at the age of 9 and was left disabled. After studying art (under professors de Kooning and Albers), he attended New York University and the Parsons School of Design, and was a regular in Greenwich Village with the likes of
Andy Warhol, Allen Ginsberg, and Robert Frank. His first
film,
Asleep, was awarded a prize at the Venice Biennale. In 1964 he settled in Great Britain where he became the driving force behind an independent cinema movement (the London Film-Makers' Cooperative). In the 1970s, he directed feature films which made him known outside the experimental movement and attracted support from cultural television stations and institutions (particularly Germany's ZDF). After working for a time on subjective documentaries on artists such as photographer Bill Brandt or the
Ballet Nègre company, his film-making became increasingly introspective as his mobility diminished. He died in June 2012.
