Pregnancy and Birth on Film

Please come to Underground's Experimental Film Series December 1st program on Women and Childbearing Choices Night. The three films deal with the pregnant, birthing, and maternal body. This series is hosted by the Department of Communication and Culture.

December 1: Women and Childbearing Choices Night

Radio/Television Building, Room 251, Friday at 7:00 PM.

Tonight we have three films dealing with birth, the choice to bear, and the challenges of parenthood. Claudia Weill’s and Joyce Chopra’s Joyce at 34 (1975, 28 min.) follows Chopra’s first year of motherhood as she juggles the conflicting demands of infant, husband, and career. Marjorie Keller’s Misconception (1977, 42 min.) is composed of six parts that together chronicle the experience of one woman and her husband during the course of her natural childbirth. Its structure lends the film a rhythm that has less to do with traditional documentary or film journalism than with the pacing of poetry. Mother Load (1994, 15 min.), by Betsy Weiss, offers an alternative approach to the traditional documentary and combines live action with stock footage to illuminate the irony implicit in the life choices women today must face when considering whether or not to bear life.

Underground Experimental Film Series
Department of Communication and Culture
Indiana University
http://www.indiana.edu/~uground/