Window Water Baby Moving

Brakhage's avant-garde classic is an intimate impression of childbirth. He later explained that he had filmed the delivery to distract himself from worrying. Nowadays, there is nothing unusual about a childbirth video, but in Brakhage's day, fathers did not even attend the delivery, let alone bring cameras to capture the most intimate details in close-up. Not surprisingly, the film was quite controversial. Brakhage used his 16mm camera to film the first contractions, the actual delivery and the cutting of his first child's umbilical cord. Later, he edited the occasionally shaky images into a non-chronological work. The reflection of the light falling through the window on the bathwater, two hands on a pregnant belly - these are just two examples of poetic images that flash by and sometimes return, as they were seen through the eyes of the master and nervous father-to-be. As most Brakhage films, is silent.