The Motherhood Archives: A Film Screening

Irene Lusztig?s film?The Motherhood Archives?charts the hidden histories of childbirth in the twentieth century. For over five years, Lusztig assembled an archive of more than one hundred educational, industrial, and medical-training films. She then edited the footage into a narrative of efforts to discipline and control the bodies of pregnant women, from the first use of anesthetic ether in the nineteenth century to the contemporary hospital birthing suite.?The Motherhood Archives?will be screened as the closing night of the?Flaherty NYC?series?That Obscure Object of Desire, programmed by Sierra Pettengill and Pacho Velez. The screening will be followed by a discussion with Lusztig and Triple Canopy senior editor Sarah Resnick.