At the age of nine he contracted polio and underwent a gruelling rehabilitation that entailed confinement in an iron lung, muscle transplants and relearning to walk, painfully, with crutches.
[4] He studied at Parsons The New School for Design, where his teachers included Willem de Kooning and Josef Albers, then at New York University.
While working as a graphic designer and art director, including a stint at CBS and Epic Records, he began making short experimental films in 1961, and became part of the bohemian world of New York 'underground' filmmakers around Jonas Mekas.
In the 1970s he began making longer films, starting with Times For (1970), whose cast included the American performance artist and filmmaker Carolee Schneemann.
A number of his films from the early 1970s onwards, including Behindert (1974), the first to deal explicitly with his life as a disabled man, were made for the German broadcaster ZDF.
In 1984 Anna Ambrose made a documentary about Dwoskin for Channel 4, featuring Mulvey, Durgnat, and others, that was shown as part of a season of his films.
Dwoskin's films have been screened worldwide including festivals at Cannes, Berlin, Rotterdam, Toronto, Lucarno, Pesaro, Mannheim, Oberhausen, Sydney, Melbourne, Hamburg, San Francisco, Turin, Riga, Madrid, Barcelona, and Benalmádena amongst other places.