Midwives – Into This World

13 août

The Business of Being Born

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 High Song

Filmed largely in close-up, this documentary records a woman giving birth while her husband remains at her side. The camera concentrates on her face throughout labor, briefly revealing the moment of the child’s arrival before the newborn is placed in her arms.

Waiting Time

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.

Naître d'une autre

Bodysong

Documentary footage from various sources, set to music. Showing the whole of human life, from birth to death and beyond.

Le Premier Cri

Documentary about births around the different cultures and regions of the world.

Orgasmic Birth: The Best-Kept Secret

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.

Die sichere Geburt

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?

maɬni—towards the ocean, towards the shore

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.

The Birth Reborn 2

Featuring experts in their fields and raw and moving footage, this documentary makes a case for increased autonomy in women's choices for childbirth.

Papa – Notes on Life and Death

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.

TEL-CLUB

In the summer of 1998, the filmmaker went home to Takasaki to film the birth of his brother and sister-in-law's child. Days go by and the child is still to be born. With time on his hands and no one to talk to, the filmmaker finds the phone number for a telephone date club, and calls up with an earnest de- sire: I'd like to talk to a girl. While following the conventions of film-diary form, at some point the filmmaker falls into a times pace tunnel of false memory.

A Midwife's Tale

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.

Birth and Death

This cinema-verite-style documentary interweaves the pregnancy and childbirth of a young woman with the lingering death of a cancer patient to comment on the celebration and tragedy of existence. The tenderness and intimacy of the young couple, and the mystery of birth are contrasted with the dignity of a man who faces his death without deception.

All My Babies... A Midwife's Own Story

George Stoney investigates the living conditions, both good and bad, in the rural, segregated South.

Sages et rebelles

A look at the daily life of midwives across Quebec.

Dream of Storks

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.

Le monde selon bébé

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.

Unseen

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.