Thigh Line Lyre Triangular is an experimental

Experimental film

Experimental film or experimental cinema is a type of cinema. Experimental film is an artistic practice relieving both of visual arts and cinema. Its origins can be found in European avant-garde movements of the twenties. Experimental cinema has built its history through the texts of theoreticians...

 short film by Stan Brakhage

Stan Brakhage

James Stanley Brakhage , better known as Stan Brakhage, was an American non-narrative filmmaker who is considered to be one of the most important figures in 20th century experimental film....

, released in 1961

1961 in film

The year 1961 in film involved some significant events, with West Side Story winning 10 Academy Awards.-Top grossing films : After theatrical re-issue- Awards :Academy Awards:* Atlantis, the Lost ContinentB...

, which depicts the birth of the director's third child, Neowyn. The film, which involves painting and hand-scratching over photographic images, is more abstract than the director's earlier Window Water Baby Moving

Window Water Baby Moving

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, Myrrena.-Production:...

, which documented the birth of Brakhage's first-born, Myrrenna.

Production

Stan Brakhage felt that Window Water Baby Moving had insufficiently captured his emotions at the birth of his child, and intended Thigh Line Lyre Triangular as an improvement.

Only at a crisis do I see both the sense as I've been trained to see it (that is, with Renaissance perspective, three-dimensional logic, colors as we've been trained to call a color a color, and so forth) and patterns that move straight out from the inside of the mind through the optic nerves - spots before my eyes, so to speak - and it's a very intensive, disturbing, but joyful experience. I've seen that every time a child was born .... Now none of that was in WINDOW WATER BABY MOVING; and I wanted a childbirth film which expressed all of my seeing at such a time.

Like many Brakhage works, Thigh Line Lyre Triangular is a silent film. Unlike Window Water Baby Moving, it was photographed in a hospital. The camera films Jane Brakhage's face and vulva

Vulva

The vulva consists of the external genital organs of the female mammal. This article deals with the vulva of the human being, although the structures are similar for other mammals....

 from a low-angle shot

Low-angle shot

In cinematography, a low-angle shot, is a shot from a camera positioned low on the vertical axis, anywhere below the eyeline, looking up.-Famous examples:...

 near her feet. A layer of paint and deliberate scratches on the surface of the film render the birth itself almost unintelligible. Brakhage himself does not appear in the film, as he intended to "[centre] the occasion in my own eyes."

Reception

Thigh Line Lyre Triangular is often contrasted against Brakhage's previous "birth film," Window Water Baby Moving. William R. Barr wrote that Thigh Line Lyre Triangular lacked the "urgency and intensity" of the earlier film, nevertheless describing it as "a layered, integrated affirmation of all creativity." Steven Dillon wrote that the film “attains the complexity of a lyrical poem by balancing subjective, painterly vision with emancipator, documentary effect.” R. Bruce Elder notes "the irony that [Brakhage], who had so vigorously rejected symbolism, resorted to using symbolism in Thigh Line Lyre Triangular.” James Peterson likened the film to the 1930s and 1940s art of Surrealist painter Joan Miró

Joan Miró

Joan Miró i Ferrà was a Spanish Catalan painter, sculptor, and ceramicist born in Barcelona.Earning international acclaim, his work has been interpreted as Surrealism, a sandbox for the subconscious mind, a re-creation of the childlike, and a manifestation of Catalan pride...

.