INTOXICATED BY MY ILLNESS

In Stephen Dwoskin's exquisite, layered reverie, nurses, bondage mistresses, pain, and pleasure fluidly intermix. Intoxicated by My Illness (Parts 1 & 2 “Intensive Care”) (41 mins) traces a period when Dwoskin was hospitalized in intensive care. “In a sense, the film becomes a way to demystify or deconstruct the impersonal toxicity of illness by the personal intoxication of one's sexuality,” Dwoskin wrote. “The film becomes a conquest of illness and hospitalization through the sexual implications found in submission, domination, care, and exultation.” Dwoskin, who contracted polio at a young age, has often made his body the subject of his work, which combines documentary, narrative, and experimental elements. In Another Time (2002, 52 mins), Dwoskin himself is rarely glimpsed, but rather his camera takes in objects and people in his room. Impressions, memories, fantasies dissolve into one another. Some Friends (Apart) (2002, 25 mins), a warm and intimate glimpse of the filmmaker's friends, is also about looking fully at another.

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