Window Water Baby Moving

Hard not to be moved by it.

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.

I call this guy a hack and then I watch Window Water Baby Moving and don't know what to believe anymore. The images are very moving, though Brakhage's voyeurism makes me a little uncomfortable. Birth as a film project means this guy takes his filmmaking very seriously, yet when you see the couple together, you can't help but think it's loving and joyful, camera or no camera. I have mixed emotions, yet I watched this twice and found it consistently beautiful. Just go with your gut.

Not really that sweet or romantic to watch, just kind of uncomfortably voyeuristic. The strangest part is Brakhage gawking and grinning like the new dad he is -- into the camera.

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

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.

this really was something. i hope that his wife was enthusiastically on board, else i can only wonder how morally acceptable this film is.

Spoilers: there was a placenta in there the whole time.

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.

איך שיר נולד, כמו תינוק

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

Somebody had to do a film like this, and Brakhage knocked it out of the park.

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?

Fascinating, moving, disturbing and beautiful.

I'm rather confused about this piece: it made me feel affection and disgust at the same time. Former was because of the warm and textural feeling of the bodies and the intimacy towards mother, but the latter was because of a compassion towards the mother who seems to be left lonely and who bears all those pains to satisfy this son of a bitch. If those were the intentions of Brakhage, it's nice; but if not, its rather accidental. I don't know...

Now everyone's doing it.

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.

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

Boh. Cutting a movie in what appears (to me) to be a random order does not improve the original movie. I guess that in 1959, this was extraordinary, but seeing it today left me cold.