Window Water Baby Moving 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....

, filmed in November 1958 and released in 1959. The film documents the birth of the director's first child, Myrrena.

Production

Stan Brakhage's wife, Jane, had insisted at 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. Jane was originally "very, very shy" about being filmed, but eventually relented after Brakhage made "a big dramatic scene and said "All right, let's forget it!"" Most of the film was photographed by Brakhage himself, but Jane occasionally took the camera to capture her husband's reactions. Jane Brakhage later recalled of the birth:

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:

“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, filmed Thigh Line Lyre Triangular

Thigh Line Lyre Triangular

Thigh Line Lyre Triangular is an experimental short film by Stan Brakhage, released in 1961, which depicts the birth of the director's third child, Neowyn...

(1961) as an improvement.

Reception

Window Water Baby Moving was often screened on a double-bill with George C. Stoney

George C. Stoney

George C. Stoney is a professor of film and cinema studies at New York University , and a pioneer in the field of documentary film. Stoney directed several influential films including All My Babies and How the Myth Was Made...

's 1953 educational film

Educational film

An educational film is a film or movie whose primary purpose is to educate. Educational films have been used in classrooms as an alternative to other teaching methods.-Cultural significance:...

, All My Babies

All My Babies

All My Babies is a 1953 educational film produced and directed by George C. Stoney which was used to educate midwives in the Southern United States.It was produced by the Georgia Department of Public Health, and written by George C...

. Brakhage was worried that his film's frank depiction of childbirth would embroil him in legal trouble, remarking "you could definitely go to jail for showing not only sexuality but nudity of any kind - though the idea of childbirth being somehow pornographic has always been offensive and disgusting to me." Nevertheless, Window Water Baby Moving has become one of Brakhage's best-known works. Critic Archer Winsten described the film as being “so forthright, so full of primitive wonder and love, so far beyond civilization in its acceptance that it becomes an experience like few in the history of movies.” Scott MacDonald credits Window Water Baby Moving with making delivery rooms more accessible to fathers, a view with which Brakhage concurs.