Times For (1970) dir. Stephen Dwoskin

Intensely psychodramatic and compelling, Stephen Dwoskin’s seminal underground first feature resists the straightforward, naive script of the sexually emancipated hippy dream. Instead, darkness, introspection, power play and doubt are given increasing prominence over the pleasures of the flesh as a man and four women interact and test their personal limits. This deep immersion in dislocated narrative, captured on hand-held 16mm, arguably reflects Dwoskin’s borderless, émigré experience. It’s something he shared with at least one of the cast – the important, highly influential, multi-media American artist Carolee Schneemann who was in London at the time. Other cast members include Verity Bargate (novelist, theatre director and co-founder of the cutting-edge Soho Theatre Company) and Maurice Colbourne (Gangsters, The Day of the Triffids, Doctor Who and Howard’s Way). Gavin Bryars provides the warm, warping drone score that holds us together – viewers and participants/characters - in this strange, Orphée-like netherworld where there is no dialogue and Dwoskin weaves in numerous formal experiments.