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He calls the hospital and gets the nurse who says she'll be right there... Stan starts worrying. I continue roaring and panting. Stan stops filming he's so upset. He gets nervous. He tells me to relax and pant. He needs to relax; I'm doing fine. I tell him how much I love him and ask him if he's got
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seized the film. Brakhage described the event thus: "When I sent in the film to be processed, Kodak sent a page that said, more or less, 'Sign this at the bottom, and we will destroy this film; otherwise, we will turn it over to police.' So then the doctor wrote a letter, and we got the footage
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if he weren't focused on filming the event. The hospital initially gave permission for filming, but this was later reneged. Instead, Brakhage transferred the birth to their home, hiring a nurse and some expensive emergency equipment. Jane was originally "very, very shy" about being filmed, but
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eventually relented after
Brakhage made "a big dramatic scene and said 'All right, let's forget it!'" Most of the film was photographed by Brakhage himself, but Jane occasionally took the camera to capture her husband's reactions. Jane Brakhage later recalled of the birth:
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has become one of
Brakhage's best-known works. Critic Archer Winsten described the film as being "so forthright, so full of primitive wonder and love, so far beyond civilization in its acceptance that it becomes an experience like few in the history of movies."
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Brakhage was worried that his film's frank depiction of childbirth would embroil him in legal trouble, remarking "you could definitely go to jail for showing not only sexuality but nudity of any kind - though the idea of childbirth being somehow
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133:, filmed in November 1958 and released in 1959. The film documents the birth of the director's first child, his daughter Myrrena, by his then-wife Jane Brakhage, now
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Brakhage's wife, Jane, had insisted that Brakhage be present at the birth of their daughter; however, Brakhage felt he would
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my face while I'm roaring and this sets him off again and reassures him, and he clickety-clackety-buzzes while I roar and pant.
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had insufficiently captured his emotions at the birth of his child, and, during the birth of his third child, he filmed
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took place in the evenings over several months. According to
Brakhage, a further delay was caused when
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with making delivery rooms more accessible to fathers, a view with which
Brakhage concurred.
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Barr, William R. (1999) "Brakhage: Artistic
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Body of vision: representations of the body in recent film and poetry,
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has always been offensive and disgusting to me." Nevertheless,
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A critical cinema: interviews with independent filmmakers,
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Winston, Archer: quoted in Dixon, Wheeler W. (2006)
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524:Blue Moses
263:References
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141:Production
98:12 minutes
715:(1981–82)
699:(1967–70)
691:(1964–69)
683:(1961–64)
532:Mothlight
242:in 2013.
222:credited
182:Reception
556:Eye Myth
246:See also
197:'s 1953
111:Language
52:Starring
723:Related
712:Arabics
449:Interim
103:Country
80: (
739:(1996)
707:(1971)
664:(1997)
645:(1988)
637:(1987)
629:(1981)
610:(1974)
602:(1972)
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559:(1967)
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296:p64-66
125:is an
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147:faint
378:IMDb
234:The
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78:1959
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129:by
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301:^
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59:)
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