Astley Harvey

Director Stephen Dwoskin pieces together home movies shot by his parents in New York City, a video letter recorded during the 1990 Gulf War by filmmaker Robert Kramer, and raw footage filmed by Dwoskin himself. A veteran of the New York independent film scene of the 1960s, Dwoskin constructs a film poem in which the strong sentiment of his personal story-he was stricken by polio and eventually confined to a wheelchair-never overwhelms the beauty of the film's distinct form. (stephendwoskin.com)

The film is just this kind wandering through the personal ways and whys of different kinds of pain in different kinds of people. Far from the academic and the medical, the film questions this phenomenon of pain. 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. (MUBI)