Window Water Baby Moving

Window Water Baby Moving (1959)

On a winter's day, a woman stretches near a window then sits in a bathtub of water. She's happy. Her lover is nearby; there are close ups of her face, her pregnant belly, and his hands caressing her. She gives birth: we see the crowning of the baby's head, then the birth itself; we watch a pair of hands tie off and cut the umbilical cord. With the help of the attending hands, the mother expels the placenta. The infant, a baby girl, nurses. We return from time to time to the bath scene. By the end, dad's excited; mother and daughter rest.

Date of release
1959-04-27
TMDB
6.9 / 10 (75)
Runtime
13m
Genres
Documentary
Director
Stan Brakhage

Casting

Interesting facts

Window Water Baby Moving is an experimental short film by Stan Brakhage, filmed in November 1958 and released in 1959. The film documents the birth of the director's first child, his daughter Myrrena, by his then-wife Jane Brakhage, later known as Jane Wodening.

Production

Stan Brakhage's wife, Jane, had insisted that Brakhage be present at the birth of their daughter; however, Brakhage felt he would faint if he weren't focused on filming the event. The hospital initially gave permission for filming, but this was later reneged. Instead, Brakhage transferred the birth to their home, hiring a nurse and some expensive emergency equipment.

He [Brakhage] calls the hospital and gets the nurse who says she'll be right there... Stan starts worrying. I continue roaring and panting. Stan stops filming he's so upset. He gets nervous. He tells me to relax and pant. He needs to relax; I'm doing fine. I tell him how much I love him and ask him if he's got my face while I'm roaring and this sets him off again and reassures him, and he clickety-clackety-buzzes while I roar and pant.

Editing of Window Water Baby Moving took place in the evenings over several months. According to Brakhage, a further delay was caused when Kodak seized the film. Brakhage described the event thus: "When I sent in the film to be processed, Kodak sent a page that said, more or less, 'Sign this at the bottom, and we will destroy this film; otherwise, we will turn it over to police.' So then the doctor wrote a letter, and we got the footage back."

Brakhage later felt that Window Water Baby Moving had insufficiently captured his emotions at the birth of his child, and, during the birth of his third child, he filmed Thigh Line Lyre Triangular (1961) as an improvement.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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