Birth Story: Ina May Gaskin and the Farm Midwives
Birth is an epically complicated subject, and the documentary Birth Story mostly does justice to it. Ina May Gaskin is the world's most famous midwife. She was a caravanning hippie who decided to go to Tennessee and set up a farm commune, which opened in 1971 and is still going strong, training midwives and delivering babies. The directors do a good job interweaving new and historical footage of the founding midwives' halcyon days. Gaskin's philosophy is simple: relax. But in the force field of childbirth, that's got to be the hardest thing of all to do. (JEN GRAVES)