Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Natural and Experimental Births: Pregnancy and Childbirth in Experimental Cinema

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
The Maternal Imagination of Film and Film Theory

  • 288 Accesses

Abstract

Joyce Wieland’s experimental film Water Sark (1964) resonates with Stan Brakhage’s Window Water Baby Moving (1959) and John Cage’s Water Walk (1959). The silence of Window Water Baby Moving can be contrasted with the experimental music of Water Sark, by Carla Bley, Ray Jessel and Mike Mantler, alongside its indirect reference to the work of John Cage. Showing a sonic analogy between Water Sark and Cage’s Water Walk, this chapter suggests Water Sark figures a tongue-in-cheek refusal of the overdetermined significance of the power of the image of the female body in experimental cinema.

This analysis will form a paradigm through which to understand post-war images of pregnancy and childbirth in experimental cinema (Blaetz, Rescuing the Fragmentary Evidence of Women’s Experimental Film. Camera Obscura: Feminism, Culture, and Media Studies 21 (3 (63)): 153–156. https://doi.org/10.1215/02705346-2006-0161992, 2006), and as an opening onto the conceptualisation of what is experimental about it. Valuing the role of humour in additional films including Agnès Varda’s L’Opéra-mouffe (1958) and Marie Menken’s Hurry Hurry! (1957), this chapter will further develop Patricia Mellencamp’s discussion (1990) of the tendency of discourses of experimental cinema to overdetermine its political, ideological and existential potential.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
eBook
USD 16.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 109.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD 109.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. 1.

    Carolee Schneemann’s diary-film Fuses (1965) and Barbara Hammer’s Jane Brakhage (1978) are other important responses to Window Water Baby Moving; however, as erotic responses to the figuration of Jane and femininity have been considered in some detail in scholarship, I do not consider these films here.

  2. 2.

    My opposition between experimental music and “feminist time” could also be extended to the idea of a “counter-cinema” that requires critical detachment, proposed in an essay by Peter Wollen (1982) that is often read alongside Johnston’s essay.

  3. 3.

    Her use of LSD is another point of interest to her work, especially as the drug was only just becoming controversial and remained a legitimate field of psychiatric research in Canada in the early 1960s.

References

  • Natural Childbirth: A Documentary Record of the Birth of a Baby by Dr. Grantly Dick-Read (Westminster Recording, 1957).

    Google Scholar 

  • A Sketch on Abigayl’s Belly. Directed by David Perry. 1968. Australia.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hurry Hurry! Directed by Marie Menken. 1957. USA.

    Google Scholar 

  • L’opéra-mouffe. Directed by Agnès Varda. 1958. France.

    Google Scholar 

  • Misconception. Directed by Marjorie Keller.1977. USA.

    Google Scholar 

  • Water Sark. Directed by Joyce Wieland. 1964. Canada.

    Google Scholar 

  • Window Water Baby Moving. Directed by Stan Brakhage. 1959. USA.

    Google Scholar 

  • Armatage, Kay. 1987. The Feminine Body: Joyce Wieland’s Water Sark. Canadian Woman Studies 8 (1).

    Google Scholar 

  • Arthur, Paul. 2007. Different/Same/Both/Neither: The Polycentric Cinema of Joyce Wieland. In Women’s Experimental Cinema, ed. Robin Blaetz, 45–66. Durham: Duke University Press.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Banning, Kass. 1999. Textual Excess in Joyce Wieland’s Hand-Tinting. In The Films of Joyce Wieland, ed. Kathryn Elder, 129–134. Toronto: Toronto International Film Festival Group.

    Google Scholar 

  • Barr, William R. 1976. Brakhage: Artistic Development in Two Childbirth Films. Film Quarterly 29 (3): 30–34. https://doi.org/10.1525/fq.1976.29.3.04a00060.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Blaetz, Robin. 1992. In Search of the Mother Tongue: Childbirth and the Cinema. Velvet Light Trap 29: 15–21.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2006. Rescuing the Fragmentary Evidence of Women’s Experimental Film. Camera Obscura: Feminism, Culture, and Media Studies 21 (3 (63)): 153–156. https://doi.org/10.1215/02705346-2006-0161992.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2007. Amnesis Time: The Films of Marjorie Keller. In Women’s Experimental Cinema, ed. Robin Blaetz, 211–238. Durham: Duke University Press.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Blüher, Dominique. 2013. Autobiography, (Re-)Enactment and the Performative Self-Portrait in Varda’s Les plages d’agnès/the Beaches of Agnès (2008). Studies in European Cinema 10 (1): 59–69. https://doi.org/10.1386/seci.10.1.59_1.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Brakhage, Stan. 1978. From Metaphors on Vision. In The Avant-Garde Film: A Reader of Theory and Criticism, ed. P. Adams Sitney. New York: Anthology Film Archives.

    Google Scholar 

  • Brenez, Nicole. 2012. Ultra-modern: Jean Epstein, or Cinema ‘Serving the Forces of Transgression and Revolt’. Trans. Mireille Dobrzynski. In Jean Epstein: Critical Essays and New Translations, ed. Sarah Keller and Jason S. Paul, 227–244. Amsterdam University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Caton, Donald. 1996. Who Said Childbirth Is Natural? The Medical Mission of Grantly Dick Read. Anesthesiology: The Journal of the American Society of Anesthesiologists 84 (4): 955–964. https://doi.org/10.1097/00000542-199604000-00024.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Chion, Michel. 2019. Audio-Vision: Sound on Screen. Trans. Claudia Gorbman. New York: Columbia University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dale, Stephen. 2019. Canadian Frame of Mind: Revisiting Joyce Wieland National Gallery of Canada Magazine, June 28, 2019. https://www.gallery.ca/magazine/your-collection/at-the-ngc/canadian-frame-of-mind-revisiting-joyce-wieland

  • Dick-Read, Grantly. 2013. Childbirth Without Fear: The Principles and Practice of Natural Childbirth. London: Pinter & Martin Ltd.

    Google Scholar 

  • Doane, Mary Ann. 1987. The Desire to Desire: Women’s Films of the 1940s. Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Elder, Kathryn, ed. 1999. The Films of Joyce Wieland. Toronto: Toronto International Film Festival Group.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ganguly, Suranjan, ed. 2017. Stan Brakhage: Interviews. Jackson: University of Mississippi Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Holmes-Moss, K.A. 2006. Negotiating the Nation: “Expanding” the Work of Joyce Wieland. Canadian Journal of Film Studies 15 (2): 20–43. https://doi.org/10.3138/cjfs.15.2.20.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Huntley, Rebecca. 2000. Sexing the Belly: An Exploration of Sex and the Pregnant Body. Sexualities 3 (3): 347–362. https://doi.org/10.1177/136346000003003004.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Johnston, Claire. 1973. Women’s Cinema as Counter-Cinema. In Notes on Women’s Cinema, Society for Education in Film and Television, 24–31. London.

    Google Scholar 

  • Keller, Majorie. 1986. The Untutored Eye: Childhood in the Films of Cocteau, Cornell, and Brakhage. Rutherford: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lundquist, Caroline. 2008. Being Torn: Toward a Phenomenology of Unwanted Pregnancy. Hypatia 23 (3): 136–155. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1527-2001.2008.tb01209.x.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lupton, Deborah. 2013. The Social Worlds of the Unborn. London: Palgrave.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • MacDonald, Scott. 2003. The Filmmaker as Visionary: Excerpts from an Interview with Stan Brakhage. Film Quarterly 56 (3): 2–11. https://doi.org/10.1525/fq.2003.56.3.2.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Mack, Ashley Noel. 2016. The Self-Made Mom: Neoliberalism and Masochistic Motherhood in Home-Birth Videos on Youtube. Women’s Studies in Communication 39 (1): 47–68. https://doi.org/10.1080/07491409.2015.1129519.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Mellencamp, Patricia. 1990. Indiscretions: Avant-Garde Film, Video, and Feminism. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Michaels, Paula A. 2014. Lamaze: An International History. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2017. The Sounds and Sights of Natural Childbirth: Films and Records in Antenatal Preparation Classes, 1950s–1980s. Social History of Medicine 31 (1): 24–40. https://doi.org/10.1093/shm/hkw119.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Moscucci, Ornella. 2003. Holistic Obstetrics: The Origins of ‘Natural Childbirth’ in Britain. Postgraduate Medical Journal 79 (929): 168–173. https://doi.org/10.1136/pmj.79.929.168.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Mount, Andre. 2011. Testing Art with a Live Studio Audience: John Cage at an Intersection of Popular Television and the Avant-Garde. Music and the Moving Image 4 (3): 31–56. https://doi.org/10.5406/musimoviimag.4.3.0036.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Nowell, Iris. 2001. Joyce Wieland: A Life in Art. Toronto: ECW Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Nyman, Michael. 1999. Experimental Music: Cage and Beyond. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Olszynko-Gryn, Jesse, and Patrick Ellis. 2017. ‘A Machine for Recreating Life’: An Introduction to Reproduction on Film. The British Journal for the History of Science 50 (3). https://doi.org/10.1017/s0007087417000632.

  • Perry, David. 2014. Memoirs of a Dedicated Amateur. Sydney: Valentine Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Peterson, James. 1994. Dreams of Chaos, Visions of Order: Understanding the American Avante-Garde Cinema. Detroit: Wayne State University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rabinovitz, Lauren. 2003. Points of Resistance: Women, Power & Politics in the New York Avant-Garde Cinema, 1943–1971. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ragona, Melissa. 2007. Swing and Sway: Marie Menken’s Filmic Events. In Women’s Experimental Cinema: Critical Frameworks, ed. Robin Blaetz, 20–44. Durham: Duke University Press.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Rosenbaum, Jonathan. 1983. Film: The Front Line. Boulder: Arden Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Samer, Roxanne. 2011. Re-Conceiving Misconception: Birth as a Site of Filmic Experimentation. Jump Cut 53: 1–5.

    Google Scholar 

  • Scott, Jay. 1999. Full Circle – True Patriot Womanhood: The Thirty Year Passage of Joyce Wieland. In The Films of Joyce Wieland, ed. Kathryn Elder, 21–28. Toronto: Toronto International Film Festival Group.

    Google Scholar 

  • Segal, Shira. 2011. Home Movies and Home Birth – The Avant-Garde Childbirth Film and Pregnancy in New Media. Unpublished PhD thesis, Indiana University.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sitney, P. Adams. 1974. Visionary Film: The American Avant-Garde. London: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 1999. There Is Only One Joyce. In The Films of Joyce Wieland, ed. Kathryn Elder, 45–50. Toronto: Toronto International Film Festival Group.

    Google Scholar 

  • Tyler, Imogen, and Lisa Baraitser. 2013. Private View, Public Birth: Making Feminist Sense of the New Visual Culture of Childbirth. Studies in the Maternal 5 (2).

    Google Scholar 

  • Vogel, Amos. 1974. Film as a Subversive Art. New York: Random House.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wodening, Jane. 2015. Brakhage’s Childhood. New York: Granary Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wollen, Peter. 1982. Readings and Writings: Semiotic Counter-Strategies. London: Verso.

    Google Scholar 

  • Zryd, Michael. 1999. There Are Many Joyces’: The Critical Reception of the Films of Joyce Wieland. In The Films of Joyce Wieland, ed. Kathryn Elder, 199–211. Toronto: Toronto International Film Festival Group.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2006. The Academy and the Avant-Garde: A Relationship of Dependence and Resistance. Cinema Journal 45 (2): 17–42. https://doi.org/10.1353/cj.2006.0023.

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Culture and Communication, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, VIC, Australia

    Lauren Bliss

Authors
  1. Lauren Bliss
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Lauren Bliss .

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2020 The Author(s)

About this chapter

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this chapter

Bliss, L. (2020). Natural and Experimental Births: Pregnancy and Childbirth in Experimental Cinema. In: The Maternal Imagination of Film and Film Theory. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-45897-3_5

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation