Women from widely different cultures speak out about giving birth, and about the traumas they have experienced when the birth does not go as expected.
The planet’s busiest maternity hospital is located in one of its poorest and most populous countries: the Philippines. There, poor women face devastating consequences as their country struggles with reproductive health policy and the politics of conservative Catholic ideologies.
Birth: it's a miracle. A rite of passage. A natural part of life. But more than anything, birth is a business. Compelled to find answers after a disappointing birth experience with her first child, actress Ricki Lake recruits filmmaker Abby Epstein to explore the maternity care system in America
The painful exit of a child of man in the world of God. The highest sense of being and the earthly joy of man and woman.
Under the shade of a Magnolia tree, a group of pregnant women gathers weekly. Among them is Teresa, an experienced midwife who listens to them attentively. Sitting in a circle, the women reflect on the impending birth of their children and their own emerging roles as mothers.
Enter the world of undisturbed birth as 11 couples share their intimate personal journeys, facing their fears and moving through pain into the ecstasy of birth. Orgasmic Birth poses the ultimate challenge to our cultural myths.
On June 11th, 1997, Philippe Kahn created the first camera phone solution to share pictures instantly on public networks. The impetus for this invention was the birth of Kahn's daughter, when he jerry-rigged a mobile phone with a digital camera and sent photos in real time. In 2016 Time Magazine included Kahn's first camera phone photo in their list of the 100 most influential photos of all time.
Based on her own experience, which she extends through the testimonies of other infertile people, director Élodie Lélu shows how Medically Assisted Procreation modifies the relationship to the body and to the imaginary.
This movie charts the three most important questions regarding birth: 1. What makes a safe birth? 2. What disrupts a birth? 3. What do birth interventions mean for mother and baby, how the birth develops and even society at large?
Documentary about births around the different cultures and regions of the world.
An experimental look at the origin of the death myth of the Chinookan people in the Pacific Northwest, following two people as they navigate their own relationships to the spirit world and a place in between life and death.
Featuring experts in their fields and raw and moving footage, this documentary makes a case for increased autonomy in women's choices for childbirth.
From the seventh month of pregnancy, the five senses of the baby in utero become functional. In the closed universe that is his, a formidable sensory exploration begins. How does he perceive his world and ours? What are its learning and memorization capacities? What happens when he is born in our world of air and gravity, which is far different from the world of his gestation, where all his needs were satisfied "to the nanosecond"? This documentary explains with precision, and a certain wonder, what we know today about the experiences and faculties of the little man, before and after birth.
"The Hart of London" is an endlessly layered tour de force. It explores life and death, the sense of place and personal displacement, and the intricate aesthetics of representation. It is a personal and spiritual film, marked inevitably by Chambers’s knowledge that he had leukemia. The late American avant-garde filmmaker Stan Brakhage said of Hart, "If I named the five greatest films [ever made], this has got to be one of them." Even this high praise falls short of hyperbole. The Hart of London is at the centre of Chambers’s extraordinary achievement.
Executive Producer Ricki Lake and Filmmaker Abby Epstein follow their landmark documentary,'The Business of Being Born', with an all-new, four part DVD series that continues their provocative and entertaining exploration of the modern maternity care system. Exploration of the maternity care system, including birthing options and celebrity birth stories.
The director’s diary told in still images of a dramatic period in which he becomes first a father and then almost loses the love of his life when his girlfriend – filmmaker Lea Glob – goes into a coma after giving birth.
Alexis is a 32-year-old white woman married to Alain, an African from Rwanda. This documentary focuses on Alexis giving birth in her parents home. As her parents and great-grandmother look on, a calm mid-wife delivers ten and a half pound Jazmine. The documentary is Interspersed with interviews with Alexis, her husband, Alexis' parents, the soon to be great-grandmother and the midwife.
Exploring the revitalization of traditional birthing practices in Indigenous communities across Turtle Island, the film blends personal stories of pregnancy, birth, loss, and renewal, revealing the vast and diverse experiences of women within the life-giving cycle.
To understand eighteenth-century America through a woman's eyes, historian and author Laurel Thatcher Ulrich spent eight years working through Martha Ballard's massive but cryptic diary. "A Midwife's Tale" chronicles the interwoven stories of two remarkable women: an eighteenth-century midwife and healer and the twentieth-century historian who brought her words to light.
Kylie Jenner documents her pregnancy and birth of her daughter.