A personal film by experimental director Stephen Dwoskin.

The film is just this kind wandering through the personal ways and whys of different kinds of pain in different kinds of people. The film searches through the many levels of pain and finds it in its unique position between disaster and pleasure. Pain is..thus plunges us instantly into the midst of controversy and the unknown.

Avant-garde appeal on behalf of and made by the adventurous leftist London cinema, The Other Cinema, using the facilities provided by the BBC community programme unit.

In their lyrical and philosophical video essay, “Telescopic Intimacy”, Cristina Álvarez López and Adrian Martin explore the works of avant-garde filmmaker Stephen Dwoskin. Aesthetically captivating and conceptually interesting, Dwoskin’s films focus on the nuances of the human face and the complexities of the visual gaze. Through unusual shots and enigmatic close-ups, Dwoskin creates a special form of “telescopic intimacy”, revolving around themes such as longing and desire, closeness and alienation, the subject and the ‘other’.

Shot in Brixton, London, in 2004, the film is originally a letter addressed to Dwoskin by its authors. It creates a unique space, movement and rhythm in which they develop his point of view on the evolution of cinema in the western world.

Born in 1904, Brandt was a shy and enigmatic man who dominated British photography for decades. His early studies of class-divided Britain were followed by the postwar series of "distorted nudes", shot on beaches and inside rooms. The film is a fitting final portrait of Brandt (it was completed in the year he died), and recomposes his work in cinematic terms. The camera moves through an apartment where the pictures were taken, to reveal photographs scattered 'in situ'. These are panned to show the surrounding space, the angle of vision and a model who reconstructs Brandt's original image. Dwoskin emphasises visual atmosphere through the language of the eye.

Includes 'portraits' of Marianne Faithfull, Thelonious Monk and 28 others, some known, some less so.

Jonas Mekas assembles 160 portraits, appearances, and fleeting sketches of underground and independent filmmakers captured between 1955 and 1996. Fast-paced and archival in spirit, the film celebrates the avant-garde as its own “nation of cinema,” a vital community existing outside the dominance of commercial film.

This distinctly personal journey into the artistic possibilities of independent film is not to be missed. Jonas Mekas, Jean-Pierre Gorin, Robert Kramer and many other visionaries and mavericks of the silver screen – as well as a book seller, a critic and a psychoanalyst – discuss what cinema has meant to them, what it is and what it could be and, implicitly, how it has changed over the 18 years in which this film was shot. Director Boris Lehman leads the charge, drawing in moments of absurdist humour and inventive camera work; he keeps things raw and spontaneous. His encounters with the now much-missed Jean Rouch and Stephen Dwoskin are particularly touching and stand testament to their personal playfulness and candour. An engaging, absorbing, epic odyssey of a movie.

A exploration of the origin, theory, philosophy and themes of Stephen Dwoskin's films from 1963 to 1984.