Window Water Baby MovingMovies like Window Water Baby Moving
- Key Features:
- Pregnancy, Pregnancy, Motherhood, Infant, Family, Love, Intimacy, Avant-garde, Experimental film, Archival footage
- Tone:
- earnest, restrained
- Target Audience:
- Fans of experimental film, Film students, Those interested in childbirth, Viewers seeking intimate portrayals of life events
- Emotional Arc:
- Joy → Awe → Peace
Window Water Baby Moving

On a winter's day, a woman stretches near a window then sits in a bathtub of water. She's happy. Her lover is nearby; there are close ups of her face, her pregnant belly, and his hands caressing her. She gives birth: we see the crowning of the baby's head, then the birth itself; we watch a pair of hands tie off and cut the umbilical cord. With the help of the attending hands, the mother expels the placenta. The infant, a baby girl, nurses. We return from time to time to the bath scene. By the end, dad's excited; mother and daughter rest. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2013.
Window Water Baby Moving
A creation myth realized in light, patterns, images superimposed, rapid cutting, and silence. A black screen, then streaks of light, then an explosion of color and squiggles and happenstance. Next, images of small circles emerge then of the Sun. Images of our Earth appear, woods, a part of a body, a nude woman perhaps giving birth. Imagery evokes movement across time. Part of the Dog Star Man series of experimental films.

After the title, a white screen gives way to a series of frames suggestive of abstract art, usually with one or two colors dominating and rapid change in the images. Two figures emerge from this jungle of color: the first, a shirtless man, appears twice, coming into focus, then disappearing behind the bursts and patterns of color, then reappearing; the second figure appears later, in the right foreground. This figure suggests someone older, someone of substance. The myth? Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2012.

A single mother and a childless morgue technician are bound together by their relationship to a little girl they have reanimated from the dead.

Ana is confronted with body and desire at three key moments of her life. As a young girl, she brings her dead grandpa back to life. In her puberty, she discovers the power of decay and sexuality. Finally, she wrestles with loss and loneliness when she returns to her parental home, now derelict.

Louise and Kasper want to become parents, but Louise cannot have children. She seals a pact with her Romanian maid, Elena, to bear her child, but things don't turn out quite as planned...

Five women are about to give birth. They do not know each other, are not alike, but will find themselves in the same maternity to live the best day of their lives. The first contractions at birth, the film traces their journey, between laughter and tears.

Working-class British housewife Myra Savage reinvents herself as a medium, holding seances in the sitting room of her home with the hidden assistance of her under-employed, asthmatic husband, Billy. In an attempt to enhance her credibility as a psychic, Myra hatches an elaborate, ill-conceived plot to kidnap a wealthy couple's young daughter so that she can then help the police "find" the missing girl.

A compilation of over 30 years of private home movie footage shot by Lithuanian-American avant-garde director Jonas Mekas, assembled by Mekas "purely by chance", without concern for chronological order.

It seems simple: an egg + sperm = one embryo. But if your sperm is "few, vague and abnormal" and your woman is premenopausal at age 37, things start to get complicated.

Scarred for life after a harrowing near-death experience, emotionally fragile mother-to-be Sarah is still struggling to come to terms with her loss. Overcome with silent grief, Sarah now seeks solace in work; however, she is on a collision course with sheer terror when a knock at the door in the dead of night chills her bones to the marrow. Now, the raven-haired, late-night visitor in black wants something precious from Sarah, and will stop at nothing to get it.

J.C. Wiatt is a talented and ambitious New York City career woman who is married to her job and working towards partner at her firm. She has a live-in relationship with Steven, a successful investment broker who, along with J.C., agreed children aren't part of the plan. J.C.'s life takes an unexpected turn when a distant relative dies and the will appoints her the caretaker of their baby girl, Elizabeth. The baby's sudden arrival causes Steven to leave, breaking off their relationship. Juggling power lunches and powdered formula, she is soon forced off the fast track by a conniving colleague and a bigoted boss. But she won't stay down for long. She'll prove to the world that a woman can have it all and on her own terms too!

It seems that Bob Jones has everything a man could want, namely a fulfilling job and a beautiful, pregnant wife, Gail. But Bob's life is turned upside-down when he is diagnosed with cancer and given four months to live -- not even enough time to see his first child's birth. To cleanse himself of demons in his remaining days, Bob makes a video diary, hoping to pass along some wisdom to his future child. Along the way, he discovers a lot about himself.

Filmmaker Jonathan Caouette's documentary on growing up with his schizophrenic mother -- a mixture of snapshots, Super-8, answering machine messages, video diaries, early short films, and more -- culled from 19 years of his life.

Lena, aged twenty, wants to know all she can about life and reality. She collects information on everyone and everything, storing her findings in an enormous archive. She experiments with relationships, political activism, and meditation. Meanwhile, the actors, director and crew are shown in a humorous parallel plot about the making of the film and their reactions to the story and each other. Nudity, explicit sex, and controversial politics kept this film from being shown in the US while its seizure by Customs was appealed.

A cruel circus owner beats and abuses his pregnant wife. One day the circus receives a leopard newly captured in Africa, but the animal soon dies. However, an evil creature that was inside the leopard bursts out of the animal's body, burrows into the wife's body and takes over her fetus. It soon starts demanding blood, and the woman goes searching for victims for her new "baby."

Seemingly at random, the wings and other bits of moths and insects move rapidly across the screen. Most are brown or sepia; up close, we can see patterns within wings, similar to the veins in a leaf. Sometimes the images look like paper cutouts, like Matisse. Green objects occasionally appear. Most wings are translucent. The technique makes them appear to be stuck directly to the film.

In Manhattan's Central Park, a film crew directed by William Greaves is shooting a screen test with various pairs of actors. It's a confrontation between a couple: he demands to know what's wrong, she challenges his sexual orientation. Cameras shoot the exchange, and another camera records Greaves and his crew. Sometimes we watch the crew discussing this scene, its language, and the process of making a movie. Is there such a thing as natural language? Are all things related to sex? The camera records distractions - a woman rides horseback past them; a garrulous homeless vet who sleeps in the park chats them up. What's the nature of making a movie?

A woman's consuming love forces her to bear the clone of her dead beloved. From his infancy to manhood, she faces the unavoidable complexities of her controversial decision.

A young couple, Rosemary and Guy, moves into an infamous New York apartment building, known by frightening legends and mysterious events, with the purpose of starting a family.

A strict, but caring mother has an awakening when she is told she has cancer and it is terminal. She has a few months. She needs to complete her tasks in that short time frame.

Juan and Sonia arrive at a large old house, an ideal place to raise their newborn son. When, one night before going to bed, they check the operation of the monitoring device installed in the baby's room, they discover that someone is sitting next to the crib.

Théo is given up for adoption by his biological mother on the very day he is born. After this anonymous birth, the mother has two months to change her mind… Or not. The child welfare services and adoption service spring into action… The former have to take care of the baby and support it during this limbo-like time, this period of uncertainty, while the latter must find a woman to become his adoptive mother. She is called Alice, and she has spent the last ten years fighting to have a child.

The story of Angela, an ambitious, image-conscious businesswoman working for over-demanding boss Mary. When Angela becomes unexpectedly pregnant at the peak of her career, her life with her divorce attorney husband, Curtis, is turned upside-down.

Lizzie's best friend, Andie, becomes pregnant and offers to give the baby to her. Lizzie's husband, Peter, reluctantly goes along with being the child's father, and Andie moves into the guest room for the remainder of the pregnancy.

An Icelandic couple live with their herd of sheep on a beautiful but remote farm. When they discover a mysterious newborn on their land, they decide to keep it and raise it as their own. This unexpected development and the prospects of a new family brings them much joy before ultimately destroying them.

When Lenore Harker learns that she's pregnant, she leaves graduate school to set up a home with her boyfriend Frank in the country. The happy new family's lives takes a gruesome turn when animals and people end up brutally dead – all with a mysterious connection to their newborn.

Jess, a newly separated mother and nurse, moves into her old family farmhouse with Tyler, her teenage daughter, and Owen, her eight-year-old son. One night, the family dog senses something in the woods and runs off to find it. He returns a couple of days later and attacks Owen, savagely biting him before Jess is able to intervene. Owen is rushed to the hospital. His condition worsens, and no one can figure out why... until Jess discovers a disturbing cure...

A portrait of the myth of maternity around the story of Pepa and her daughter, who are evicted from their home and forced to wander for a place to live with no support network.

Laura's expecting. Her husband, Steven's a loving guy but has little time for her. Her mom lives thousands of miles away. Forced to give up on her dreams, she's always been a bit edgy. A C-section drives her over the edge, making her see things in a different light. A creepy babysitter doesn't make things any better. She begins seeing things, trusts no one, as she goes into self-destruct mode.

A wheelchair-bound photographer spies on his neighbors from his apartment window and becomes convinced one of them has committed murder.

Along with her husband and three children, Marthe lives in an eden of her own creation, nearly isolated from the rest of the world. The arrival of a construction vehicle, however, pierces their tranquil, hermetic existence—before long a disused highway has been re-opened, and the family finds their home situated in the midst of rush-hour traffic. While the privileges of clean air, quietude and privacy are thus denied them, Marthe remains determined to stay no matter the cost.

France, 1963. Anne is a bright young student with a promising future ahead of her. But when she falls pregnant, she sees the opportunity to finish her studies and escape the constraints of her social background disappearing. With her final exams fast approaching and her belly growing, Anne resolves to act, even if she has to confront shame and pain, even if she must risk prison to do so.

Richard and Rachel, a couple in the throes of infertility, try to maintain their marriage as they descend deeper and deeper into the insular world of assisted reproduction and domestic adoption.

Lydia, a midwife very invested in her work, is in the middle of a breakup. At the same time, her best friend, Salomé, announces to her that she is pregnant and asks her to follow her pregnancy. The day Lydia meets Milos, a one-night stand, while she is holding her friend's baby in her arms, she sinks into a lie, at the risk of losing everything.

The lives of three women have a commonality: adoption. Karen is a physical therapist who regrets that, as a teenager, she gave up her daughter for adoption. Elizabeth was an adopted child and is now a successful lawyer, but her personal life lacks warmth. Lucy and her husband have failed to conceive and now hope to adopt a baby to make their family complete.

Impressions of the rue Mouffetard, Paris 5, through the eyes of a pregnant woman.

First-time father Henry Spencer tries to survive his industrial environment, his angry girlfriend, and the unbearable screams of his newly born mutant child.

Francesca is a pediatrician who is dedicated to both motherhood and children, married to another physician, Pedro. After the birth of a new child, Francesca begins to suffer from postpartum depression. Following the advice of friend and psychiatrist Jean, the couple move to a new home away from the city…

After struggling to start a family, Julie Rivers becomes pregnant and moves into a new home with her husband. She's ordered to mandatory bed rest, and begins seeing ghostly happenings throughout the house.

Two co-workers, one a vain woman and the other an awkward teenager, share an increasingly bizarre relationship after becoming roommates.

A young American woman traveling through Italy finds herself in a strange Mediterranean villa where nothing seems quite right.

Real-life young couple Wim and Floor spend an afternoon in the sunwashed rooms of a crumbling home in Belgium. In a unique twist, this artistic erotic documentary is edited in nearly real-time. In the slowness, we get the build, the sweetness, and the sexiness. Forget about fingersnapping fast editing. Slow is where it’s at.

Gabriell is a single mother, her 17-year-old daughter Claire is pregnant, however the child's father Simon has no desire to be involved with his future baby. When Gabrielle takes matters into her own hands and asks Simon's father Ange for help, an unexpected relationship begins.

In the wake of a horrific car accident that kills her husband, Michael, expectant mother Madeline Matheson discovers that her daughter, Grace, has died in the womb. Ignoring her doctor's warnings that the fetus must be removed from her body, a grief-stricken Matheson demands to carry the child to term -- even if it endangers her own life to do so. Curiously, little Grace emerges undead -- and with a craving for human blood.

Jake and Kristy Briggs are newlyweds. Being young, they are perhaps a bit unprepared for the full reality of marriage and all that it (and their parents) expect from them. Do they want babies? Their parents certainly want them to. Is married life all that there is? Things certainly aren't helped by Jake's friend Davis, who always seems to turn up just in time to put a spanner in the works.

Joseph learns that his son and his companion have just perished in an accident. They were expecting a child via a surrogate mother in Belgium. What will become of their future baby? Is Joseph the legitimate grandfather? Carried by the promise of this birth which will prolong the existence of his son, the sexagenarian goes to meet the young Flemish woman with a fierce and indomitable character.

Completely on her own, Sarah spends her time at home, waiting for the approaching birth of her child. But one night, a stranger breaks into her home, ready to snatch her still unborn baby from her.

The story of a middle-aged woman with small children whose life is shaken up when two free-spirited twenty-somethings move in across the street.

She drove me into a corner, then forced me to go beyond my limits. She made me confront the absolute: love, sacrifice, tenderness, abandonment. She dislocated me, transformed me. Why didn't anyone warn me? Why doesn't anyone ever talk about this?" Un heureux événement, or an intimate view of motherhood, sincere and with no taboos.

As a young New York couple goes from college romance to marriage and the birth of their first child, the unexpected twists of their journey create reverberations that echo over continents and through lifetimes.

A woman employs a gay man to spend four nights at her house to watch her when she's "unwatchable".

The Freelings' suburban home becomes the center of paranormal activity that opens a portal to the 'other side'. With help, they must cross over to get their daughter back.

A young woman, Janice, is living with her restrictive and conservative parents, who lead a dull working-class life and consider their daughter to be “misbehaving” whenever she’s trying to find her own way in life.

When a housewife finds out she is pregnant, she runs out of town looking for freedom to reevaluate her life decisions.

When a childless couple learn that they cannot have children, it causes great distress. To ease his wife's pain, the man finds a piece of root in the backyard and chops it and varnishes it into the shape of a child. However the woman takes the root as her baby and starts to pretend that it is real.

Blessed with a keen sense of smell and cursed with a philandering pornographer husband, a parasitic mother, and a pair of delinquent children, the long-suffering Francine Fishpaw turns to the bottle as her life falls apart -- until deliverance appears in the form of a hunk named Todd Tomorrow. Originally screened with "Odorama" scratch and sniff cards so the audience could (at their own risk) smell along with the film.

Two buddies visit a friends couple-urban sophisticate, inhibited parents. While they meet with the baby in his room, the two buddies start on bad jokes about his physique. But they ignore that in the kitchen, everyone hears them through the baby monitor !

Exhibit A tells the timely story of a normal family disintegrating under financial pressure. All is not as it seems as the King family go about their day-to-day lives oblivious of the horror to come. Dad Andy (Bradley Cole) is nursing a secret that ultimately leads to terrible consequences for them all. We witness these chilling events unfold through daughter Judith's video camera, which subsequently becomes Exhibit A.

A woman goes to a back alley abortion clinic, only to have her aborted fetus attack her, her boyfriend, and everyone else at the clinic.

A pregnant widow, believing herself to be guided by her unborn child, embarks on a homicidal rampage.

Looking to adopt a child and unable to conceive a child of their own, the Morrisons' lives are turned upside down when a seven-year-old boy unexpectedly shows up on their doorstep.

Sara and Nicola are married and in love. Their lives seem to be perfect: they have an angelic six-year-old daughter, thriving careers and a stable marriage. The birth of their second child, which disrupts the family balance, leads to tragicomic scenarios.

Takes us to locations all around the US and shows us the heavy toll that modern technology is having on humans and the earth. The visual tone poem contains neither dialogue nor a vocalized narration: its tone is set by the juxtaposition of images and the exceptional music by Philip Glass.

In a distinctly contemporary Tokyo that looks backwards to the city’s disappearing past, Yoko is a writer investigating the life of a modernist composer of the 1930s. She is pregnant by a man she does not want to marry and has found a kindred spirit in a used bookstore owner who aids her research.

Verona and Burt have moved to Colorado to be close to Burt's parents but, with Verona expecting their first child, Burt's parents inexplicably decide to move to Belgium, now leaving them in a place they hate and without a support structure in place. They set off on a whirlwind tour of of disparate locations where they have friends or relatives, sampling not only different cities and climates but also different families. Along the way they realize that the journey is less about discovering where they want to live and more about figuring out what type of parents they want to be.

After the death of her daughter, wealthy housewife Julia Lofting abruptly leaves her husband and moves into an old Victorian home in London to re-start her life. All seems well until she is haunted by the sadness of losing her own child and the ghosts of other children.

Clara, a vibrant former music critic and widow with flowing tresses is the only remaining apartment owner in a beautiful older building targeted for demolition by ruthless luxury high-rise developers. Clara proves to be a force to be reckoned with as she thwarts the builders plans to kick her out of the apartment.

Two children wake up in the middle of the night to find their father is missing, and all the windows and doors in their home have vanished.

Two unmarried women who have become pregnant by accident and are about to give birth meet in a hospital room: Janis, in her late-thirties, unrepentant and happy; Ana, a teenager, remorseful and frightened.

Georgia and her boyfriend Sam go on a treacherous journey to escape their country, which is caught in an unexpected war with artificial intelligence. Days away from the arrival of their first child, the couple must face No Man’s Land—a stronghold of the android uprising—in hopes of reaching safety before giving birth.

A young couples lives are turned upside down when the birth of their first child is accompanied by terrifying entities that threaten their newly formed family.

The Davises are expecting a baby, which turns out to be a monster with a nasty habit of killing people whenever scared. And it's easily scared.

Alice Tate, mother of two, with a marriage of 16 years, finds herself falling for a handsome sax player, Joe. Stricken with a backache, she consults herbalist Dr. Yang, who realizes that her problems are not related to her back, but in her mind and heart. Dr. Yang's magical herbs give Alice wondrous powers, taking her out of her well-established rut.

A young woman in early-1900s Italy searches for a mystical sanctuary where her stillborn child can be brought back to life long enough to be baptized.

After her adoptive mother dies, Hortense, a successful black optometrist, seeks out her birth mother. She's shocked when her research leads her to Cynthia, a working class white woman.

A fatally ill mother with only two months to live creates a list of things she wants to do before she dies without telling her family of her illness.

An agoraphobic woman living alone in New York begins spying on her new neighbors only to witness a disturbing act of violence.

This is a hand-painted film which has been photographically step-printed to achieve various effects of brief fades and fluidity-of-motion, and makes partial use of painted frames in repetition (for "close-up" of textures). The tone of the film is primarily dark blue, and the paint is composed (and rephotographed microscopically) to suggest galactic forms in a space of stars.

Just as Daniel and Kristi welcome a newborn baby into their home, a demonic presence begins terrorizing them, tearing apart their perfect world and turning it into an inescapable nightmare.

Anna happily lives with her husband, their two boys, and Simon, 6 years-old, who was placed with her by the Social Care services when he was only 18 months. When Simon’s father decides that he is ready to take his son back with him, the family’s balance is at stake. Anna is torn apart: how could she possibly let go a of child who has always called her ‘Mom’?

They were the perfect loving couple, well, almost. Emmanuel wanted a child but Philippe didn't. One day, however, Emmanuel decides to take the plunge, at the risk of losing Philippe. But how do you make a child when you are gay?

In a time of social change and unrest, war and poverty, a young working class woman, Maria, wins a camera in a lottery. The decision to keep it alters her whole life.

Claire is a midwife and has devoted her life to others. At a moment when she is preoccupied by the imminent closure of the maternity clinic where she works, her life is further turned upside down when Béatrice, her father's former mistress, turns up on the scene. Béatrice is a capricious and selfish woman, Claire's exact opposite.

What does the energy harnessed through orgasm have to do with the state of communist Yugoslavia circa 1971? Only counterculture filmmaker extraordinaire Dušan Makavejev has the answers (or the questions). His surreal documentary-fiction collision begins as an investigation into the life and work of controversial psychologist and philosopher Wilhelm Reich and then explodes into a free-form narrative of a beautiful young Slavic girl’s sexual liberation.

After welcoming her baby, Ruby, home, the tightly scripted world of lifestyle influencer Jo starts to unravel. As increasingly sinister happenings mount, Jo is plunged into a waking fever dream where everyone is a threat and nothing is what it seems.

A story about director Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s parents who were both doctors, and his memories of growing up in a hospital environment.

When a hotel hallway is ravaged by a dreadful airborne virus, pregnant Japanese runaway wife Naomi is tragically thrust into the fight of her life. After getting infected, she is forced to crawl her way through other helpless victims to escape. In the room next door to her is Val, a mother trapped in a toxic marriage, who must also navigate her way out of the hotel corridor through the long and narrow stretch of isolated carnage, desperately looking for her young daughter Kelly. Will these two women avoid the debilitating sickness and get out alive?

Matt, a young glaciologist, soars across the vast, silent, icebound immensities of the South Pole as he recalls his love affair with Lisa. They meet at a mobbed rock concert in a vast music hall - London's Brixton Academy. They are in bed at night's end. Together, over a period of several months, they pursue a mutual sexual passion whose inevitable stages unfold in counterpoint to nine live-concert songs.

Rose and her daughter Sofia travel to the Spanish seaside town of Almería to consult with the shamanic Dr. Gomez, a physician who could possibly hold the cure to Rose’s mystery illness, which has left her bound to a wheelchair. But in the sultry atmosphere of this sun-bleached town Sofia, who has been trapped by her mother’s illness all her life, finally starts to shed her inhibitions, enticed by the persuasive charms of enigmatic traveller Ingrid.

Two actresses, Béatrice Dalle and Charlotte Gainsbourg, are on a film set telling stories about witches.

Hunter, a newly pregnant housewife, finds herself increasingly compelled to consume dangerous objects. As her husband and his family tighten their control over her life, she must confront the dark secret behind her new obsession.

A visual representation, in four parts, of one man's internalization of "The Divine Comedy." Hell is a series of multicolored brush strokes against a white background; the speed of the changing images varies. "Hell Spit Flexion," or springing out of Hell, is on smaller film stock, taking the center of the frame. Montages of color move rapidly with a star and the edge of a lighted moon briefly visible. Purgation is back to full frame; blurs of color occasionally slow down then freeze. From time to time, an image, such as a window or a face, is distinguishable for a moment. In "existence is song," colors swirl then flash in and out of view. Behind the vivid colors are momentary glimpses of volcanic activity.

Challenges of impending parenthood turn the lives of five couples upside down. Two celebrities are unprepared for the surprise demands of pregnancy; hormones wreak havoc on a baby-crazy author, while her husband tries not to be outdone by his father, who's expecting twins with his young trophy wife; a photographer's husband isn't sure about his wife's adoption plans; a one-time hook-up results in a surprise pregnancy for rival food-truck owners.

A young woman left her family for an unspecified reason. The husband determines to find out the truth and starts following his wife. At first, he suspects that a man is involved. But gradually, he finds out more and more strange behaviors and bizarre incidents that indicate something more than a possessed love affair.

When high school sweethearts John and Kathy find out Kathy is pregnant, they decide to get married and move to Cambridge so John can fulfill his scholarship to Harvard. But faced with the harsh reality of their situation, Kathy leaves John behind, compelling him to rent a room from Dorothy, a psychic who encourages him as he struggles to balance school and fatherhood.

Wavelength consists of almost no action, and what action does occur is largely elided. If the film could be said to have a conventional plot, this would presumably refer to the three “character” scenes. In the first scene two people enter a room, chat briefly, and listen to “Strawberry Fields Forever” on the radio. Later, a man (played by filmmaker Hollis Frampton) enters inexplicably and dies on the floor. And last, the female owner of the apartment is heard and seen on the phone, speaking, with strange calm, about the dead man in her apartment whom she has never seen before.



