Profoundly beautiful and very moving. Brakhage films the birth of his first child and yet does so much more. Within his mad flurry of editing and with no need for sound he finds the emotions he and his wife feel, the pain and joy and beauty and ugliness of birth, and something almost sacred as light seeps in through a window on to the birthing pool.

Emotionally potent, stunning, unflinching, and rhythmic filmic poem about the biological miracle of birth. Instantly my favorite Brakhage yet. And who knew Brakhage was a really nice looking guy when he was young?

Even if you film it in some avant-garde way to make it arty, I still don't care about the birth of a child that isn't mine.

Disgusting, but utterly beautiful. Raises questions - not ethical ones, but close - about a life so entwined with filmmaking that literally nothing is apart from it.

Maya Deren thought this movie was a blasphemy. I think filming the birth of your daughter, in this kind of detail and with this level of artistry, is bizarre and actually kind of beautiful. I wish *I* had had an internationally celebrated experimental filmmaker film my birth and turn it into an art film. I would show it with pride to friends and neighbors for the rest of my life

Who else could have taken the courage to picture the birth of their breed?

Probably Brakhage's most famous work. In a way, this is a negation of The Act of Seeing, even though it came many years earlier. It's all about the physicality of life. Its more abstract form is an expression of creation... it's construction, not reportage. Rhythmic, poetic, full of life and imbued with love. There are still parts that are visceral in nature, but in context they are beautiful, not horrifying.

I'm not a huge fan of experimental filmmaker Stan Brakhage and here is not different.

Fascinating, moving, disturbing and beautiful.

I'm just not much into avant-garde/experimental film. This was just too disturbing for me and I felt like I was intruding on something private and sacred.

Hard not to be moved by it.

One of the few films, short or feature, that completely captivated me from start to finish