This is an age restricted video. You can watch the video by clicking on the link above and promising that you are of age to watch live births. Watch the video here.
Editor’s Note: In a Kindred interview with the Godmother of Midwifery in 2011, Ina May Gaskin told Lisa Reagan, Kindred’s editor, that our nonprofit had been trying – for twenty years – to “have The Farm without The Farm.” She was right. For the first decade of our existence, we created Gathering Groups around the country, over 60, before turning over the fast-growing program to a larger nonprofit to continue to run (read the story here). Then, and now, parents find themselves trying to raise a child without the village, or the farm.
How would our lives be different if we lived in the close-knit community we crave? Do we still possess the skills to live in community? Share your thoughts with us below!
Read articles from Ina May Gaskin on Kindred
Listen to Ina May Gaskin’s interview on Kindred
Watch video interviews with Ina May, and her husband Stephen, on Kindred.
About this film
In this extended-length installment of Birth Undisturbed, we travel to the famous Farm in Tennessee founded by Ina May and Stephen Gaskin, where the globally iconic Spiritual Midwifery was first published. Artist Natalie Lennard meets with midwives connected to Ina May in search of visual inspiration to make a new piece of art to portray the Farm’s legacy.
It all began in 1971 when 300 hippies set off in a convoy of buses from California in search of a new life. Called ‘the Caravan’, they were ‘out to save the world’ and create their own culture – at the heart of which was a fearless attitude to childbirth. The pregnant women, passing round pregnancy and birth manuals, delivered each others’ babies along the journey. It was the memory of that first woman, calmly and tenderly birthing in the arms of her husband on a pitstop, that was to indelibly transform the minds of the women who watched and who were to become global influencers of the modern midwifery movement.
Directed, produced & edited by Natalie Lennard. With thanks to the Farm midwives and residents featured.
Full credits at https://www.birthundisturbed.com/powe… Set at The Farm Tennessee (filmed by Tribe Creative Media supported by Parachutco) and Blackberry Wood, Brighton England (filmed by Tim Matthews).
This film is not monetised. All sources credited onscreen, fair use with no ownership implied. Featuring screenshots and clips from Birth Story, full documentary highly recommended at http://www.birthstorymovie.com Featuring book pages from Spiritual Midwifery (1975) and Ina May’s Guide to Childbirth (2008). Artist contact natalielennardfineart@gmail.com