SeeQuant Blending excellent reporting and strong storytelling, this is a disturbing film truly stranger than fiction

Orla Zuniga It is interesting even when nothing much happens, which is for most of its 3-hour running time. Read full review

Mehdi Hoffman There's a more than satisfactory amount of boom-boom in the movie's trim running time.

Jakoba True to its essence, the characters remain on the same line and manage to entertain the viewer, each highlighting their own distinctive qualities or touches.

runamokprods Some amazing footage of the birth of Brakhage's 1st child, shot with great explicitness, with no holding back- we see the 'birth' of the placenta, the baby crowning, etc. And while this is as explicit a birth as I've seen, the setting (at home) and the feeling of intimacy make it anything but clinical, or exploitive. It's really quite sweet. On the other hand, Brakhage's insistence on rapid jump cuts, self-consciously oblique angles, etc worked in the other direction, pushing me away from a straightforward emotional experience. Which was, of course part of the intent. In making it not a documentary, but a subjective, somewhat surreal film, it seemed to be trying to go beyond a simple well-made telling. For me that worked well at times, but at others I'll admit to longing to finding the effects frustrating and not understanding exactly what they were trying to communicate emotionally or intellectually.Beyond it's merits as a film, it was also important in that this kind of footage simply didn't exist at the time. It was initially seized by the Kodak lab, and Brakhage had to get a note from the doctor involved explaining it wasn't pornography (!). The film was part of the beginning of the movement towards accepting childbirth as beautiful and without need to be hidden, that fathers can and should be in the room to witness and take part, and that big white hospitals aren't the only place to have a baby. So it had an impact on a social as well as a cinematic level.

timothysimon i liked his filmic style at first, his use of jump cuts and sped up footage was effective in portraying the woman's fear and angst although she looked calm on the outside. it also elevated the importance of the action of giving birth. but i don't think the lingering graphic shots of the vagina bleeding did anything for the film and took me out of the rather mysterious tranquil feeling given off by the film previously. he certainly knows how to make a film affecting but i won't want to watch it again and i don't think it conveyed any of the actualities of birth, the beauty and the miracle.

Squrpleboy It took me nearly ten years to muster up the guts to actually sit through an entire viewing of Stan Brakhage's WINDOW WATER BABY MOVING.......... and my courage has been completely rewarded by it! Even in this time, when watching live births on TV is commonplace, Brakhage's film (then ground-breaking for 1959) on the birth of his first child takes that "miracle" of life to an exultant place beyond the merely visual or educational, and gives the viewer the truth of both love and art.Warm skin-tones, loving hands on his pregnant wife Jane's stomach, water washing over expectant skin, eyes, smiles, and the clearly visible movement of a child in the womb through the protruding abdomen eventually give way to extremely graphic, though emotionally and viscerally stunning shots of a child being born. All the pain, commitment, necessity, care and truth (the WHOLE truth!!!) involved in the before, during and after stages of becoming a part of this world are fully documented by Brakhage the filmmaker and father. The compositioning, colours, movements, angles, sequencing and revelations ultimately forming an incredible visual poem on and about the love of a man and a woman, and the child they have created together. Made all the more powerful and impacting by the complete lack of sound; thereby letting the eye do the "reading".I had never seen anything so breathtaking, eye-opening, informative, and completely uncensored, yet so fraught with beauty before I saw this film tonight. When Brakhage grasps his head and smiles so wonderously at the end I couldn't help but smile back for him. One creation spawning another, shared with us all.10/10. A true miracle.

quin1974 I saw this short a few days ago at the Rotterdam Film Course for the International Rotterdam Film Festival and it blew me away. I had read some information about this short and wasn't that impressed, after all there are loads of programmes nowadays on TV that handle this subject as entertainment fodder.What I did not know up front was the fact that Stan Brakhage never uses sound. That's probably where the power lies. The pictures were so incredibly strong and vibrant because of lighting, color and the sheer graphic visions Brakhage presents to the viewers that sound would have been distracting to say the least.The pictures are not for the easily spooked persons or women who are thinking about having a baby. This is a straightforward account of child birth with all the gore, blood and beauty that accompanies it. It opened my eyes, 'cause I had never seen anything like it before in my life, and it is after all the most natural happening in the world.After 13 minutes you will be left breathless.10/10