Release calendarTop 250 moviesMost popular moviesBrowse movies by genreTop box officeShowtimes & ticketsMovie newsIndia movie spotlight
    What's on TV & streamingTop 250 TV showsMost popular TV showsBrowse TV shows by genreTV news
    What to watchLatest trailersIMDb OriginalsIMDb PicksIMDb SpotlightFamily entertainment guideIMDb Podcasts
    OscarsEmmysToronto Int'l Film FestivalIMDb TIFF Portrait StudioHispanic Heritage MonthSTARmeter AwardsAwards CentralFestival CentralAll events
    Born todayMost popular celebsCelebrity news
    Help centerContributor zonePolls
For industry professionals
  • Language
  • Fully supported
  • English (United States)
    Partially supported
  • Français (Canada)
  • Français (France)
  • Deutsch (Deutschland)
  • हिंदी (भारत)
  • Italiano (Italia)
  • Português (Brasil)
  • Español (España)
  • Español (México)
Watchlist
Sign in
  • Fully supported
  • English (United States)
    Partially supported
  • Français (Canada)
  • Français (France)
  • Deutsch (Deutschland)
  • हिंदी (भारत)
  • Italiano (Italia)
  • Português (Brasil)
  • Español (España)
  • Español (México)
Use app
  • Cast & crew
  • User reviews
  • Trivia
IMDbPro

Window Water Baby Moving

  • 1959
  • 13m
IMDb RATING
7.5/10
2.6K
YOUR RATING
Window Water Baby Moving (1959)
DocumentaryShort

Stan Brakhage films the birth of his first child, Myrrena.Stan Brakhage films the birth of his first child, Myrrena.Stan Brakhage films the birth of his first child, Myrrena.

  • Director
    • Stan Brakhage
  • Stars
    • Stan Brakhage
    • Myrrena Schwegmann
    • Jane Wodening
  • See production info at IMDbPro
  • IMDb RATING
    7.5/10
    2.6K
    YOUR RATING
    • Director
      • Stan Brakhage
    • Stars
      • Stan Brakhage
      • Myrrena Schwegmann
      • Jane Wodening
    • 12User reviews
    • 4Critic reviews
  • See production info at IMDbPro
  • See production info at IMDbPro
  • Photos3

    View Poster
    View Poster
    View Poster

    Top cast3

    Edit
    Stan Brakhage
    Stan Brakhage
    • Self
    • (uncredited)
    Myrrena Schwegmann
    • Self (baby being born)
    • (uncredited)
    Jane Wodening
    • Self
    • (uncredited)
    • Director
      • Stan Brakhage
    • All cast & crew
    • Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

    User reviews12

    7.52.5K
    1
    2
    3
    4
    5
    6
    7
    8
    9
    10

    Featured reviews

    9framptonhollis

    A Beautiful Experimental Film

    "Window Water Baby Moving" is possibly influential experimental filmmaker Stan Brakhage's most well-known film. In this masterpiece, he simply documents the birth of his first child. And it is possibly the greatest film he's ever made.

    To be fair, I haven't seen Brakhage's "Dog Star Man", which also looks like a masterwork, but whether or not it is truly his best film, it is still a beautiful film.

    Stan Brakhage uses his normal fast paced, experimental editing that has been used in his other documentary works (ex. "The Act of Seeing with One's Own Eyes"), as well as some very artistic, and highly experimental, camera-work. Brakhage's documentary films aren't just simple home movies, but great works of art, just look at the film! Every shot is an artistic masterpiece, and it is a truly great document of life and love.

    Although the film uses highly graphic imagery to tell it's story, it is really a sweet document. Yes, the birth is shown in EXTREME detail, but, at the end, you see how loving these new parents are. The mother (Jane Brakhage) holds her newborn in her arms, and the father (Stan Brakhage) looks greatly excited and happy, he's hoping up and down, with a great smile on his face.

    Stan Brakhage has proved himself, in my opinion, to not only be one of the great experimental filmmakers, but of of the great documentary filmmakers, as well.
    Michael_Elliott

    Great

    Window Water Baby Moving (1962)

    **** (out of 4)

    I'm not quite sure where the line is drawn when it comes to art and a simple home movie but this film is certainly the best of both. Director Brakhage made this eleven-minute film dealing with the birth of his first child. The mixture of something beautiful like art and something ugly like a home movie is rather interesting for the story as there's a lot of ugliness that goes along with childbirth but at the same time there's also something beautiful about it and this film perfectly captures both. Nothing during the birth sequence is kept to the imagination as the director gets the camera very close to where all the action is going on and he doesn't shy away from showing anything. It's rather amazing that his wife was such a good sport because there had to be times where he was in the way of the birth just to get certain shots. The film shows a lot of this ugly, bloody mess but it's also done very beautifully. The birth shots and edited with shots of Brakhage and his wife loving on one another and the way this editing is done really captures the love and affection the director must have been feeling.
    4timothysimon

    no masterpiece

    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.
    6carpentere

    A visceral experience like no other.

    An amazing avant-garde short of the birth of Brakhage's first child. This film is both graphic and beautiful while effecting each viewer a little differently. The colors in the film are especially striking. (Warning this film is not for the queazy).
    10Quinoa1984

    the most personal 'family film' ever made

    You ever see that cliché happening, if not in TV or movies then in real life, of the husband documenting every single excruciatingly painful but miraculous happening that is birth? Apparently, according to Stan Brakhage on the DVD this film is on, this trend was at least in part inspired by his original efforts. Shot on a minimal budget (save for what it must've cost to have a birth in the Brakhage household as opposed to the hospital), this film IS the difference between a simple 'home movie' and something close to the most personal art possible. Documentary film-making has always been about a subject that compels the filmmaker enough to get hours and hours of footage down. That here Brakhage, who often does montage work of paintings and the like, is focusing his subject matter on his wife, and his child just itching to get out, in all graphic detail, is astounding. For the 60's, when this was first released, it was probably a lot more shocking than now.

    Not to say that the film isn't shocking, but it is on a different level than what you might see on one of those 'birth' shows on one of the Discovery channels. The way certain things are presented in the film are surprising, and (if you're a guy like me) definitely unnerving. But Brakhage somehow makes his film almost beautiful in a way by cutting the film's subject matter in half, so to speak. The first half is just the mother of his child, in a bathtub, feeling the baby kicking, et all. It's really just a great montage of the woman as a whole, nothing unseen, with the belly getting the most screen-time aside from the mother's face and genitals. Then comes the second part, the birth. Basically, if you still wonder how it works, in near unflinching detail, watch the film. That it is presented in such a grainy 16mm kind of filming, and still using the intense, mad montage of Brakhage's two cameras on her (I think it was two, one more close to the 'action' than the other).

    And when it ends, it is, like all (practically) successful births, a miracle in and of itself. So much happens within these 13 minutes of film than, in a way, it feels longer. I loved how it dealt with its subject matter, which could be very tricky, and messy (the latter of which is very true), and was still a wonder for the eyes. It lacks music, which is sort of a pro and a con for me- you could do with some music, make it even more home movie-like. As it is, Brakhage has one of his most notorious- and possibly best- works here, and maybe the only film that makes that bridge between a health class and film class in school.

    More like this

    Mothlight
    6.2
    Mothlight
    The Act of Seeing with One's Own Eyes
    6.9
    The Act of Seeing with One's Own Eyes
    Dog Star Man
    6.3
    Dog Star Man
    At Land
    7.5
    At Land
    Outer Space
    7.1
    Outer Space
    Cat's Cradle
    5.9
    Cat's Cradle
    The Dante Quartet
    6.8
    The Dante Quartet
    Neighbours
    7.9
    Neighbours
    Eye Myth
    5.9
    Eye Myth
    Meshes of the Afternoon
    7.8
    Meshes of the Afternoon
    Ritual in Transfigured Time
    6.9
    Ritual in Transfigured Time
    Pas de deux
    7.8
    Pas de deux

    Related interests

    Dziga Vertov in Man with a Movie Camera (1929)
    Documentary
    Benedict Cumberbatch in The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar (2023)
    Short

    Storyline

    Edit

    Did you know

    Edit
    • Trivia
      In the early 80's, Brakhage screened 'Window Water Baby Moving' to Andrei Tarkovsky who wasn't impressed with the film. Brakhage said in an interview: "The first film was Window Water Baby Moving. First of all I got nervous because Olga, who is teetering over me on the bureau, begins to sway. I've seen people faint at that film and I don't know, maybe she's never seen childbirth before. And then I see Tarkovsky's wife averting her face from the screen at times as you get to see some of the more explicit details of childbirth. ... Tarkovsky starts talking in rapid Russian, with Zanussi answering him, and whatever he's saying it's obviously angry. Finally, after a lot of these exchanges, Jane had the presence of mind to say, "What's going on? What's he saying?" So Zanussi starts translating and he says, "Well..." and we all wait, "Well... he says," and we wait some more, "he says that Art must have a mystery to it and this is too scientific to be Art.""
    • Connections
      Edited into Alt-J: Pleader (2017)

    Top picks

    Sign in to rate and Watchlist for personalized recommendations
    Sign in

    Details

    Edit
    • Release date
      • August 2, 1959 (United States)
    • Country of origin
      • United States
    • Also known as
      • Window, Water, Baby, Moving
    • See more company credits at IMDbPro

    Tech specs

    Edit
    • Runtime
      • 13m
    • Color
      • Color
    • Sound mix
      • Silent
    • Aspect ratio
      • 1.37 : 1

    Contribute to this page

    Suggest an edit or add missing content
    • Learn more about contributing
    Edit page

    More to explore

    Recently viewed

    Please enable browser cookies to use this feature. Learn more.
    Get the IMDb App
    Sign in for more accessSign in for more access
    Follow IMDb on social
    Get the IMDb App
    For Android and iOS
    Get the IMDb App
    • Help
    • Site Index
    • IMDbPro
    • Box Office Mojo
    • License IMDb Data
    • Press Room
    • Advertising
    • Jobs
    • Conditions of Use
    • Privacy Policy
    • Your Ads Privacy Choices
    IMDb, an Amazon company

    © 1990-2025 by IMDb.com, Inc.