alr

A Midwife's Tale

Screening on Film
Directed by Richard P. Rogers.
US, 1998, 16mm, color, 89 min.
Print source: HFA

In one of his last films, Rogers worked with writer Laurie Kahn to adapt Laurel Thatcher Ulrich’s Pulitzer Prize winning book, A Midwife’s Tale, into a feature-length film for PBS’ American Experience. Ulrich’s book was already a radical text, one that used the life of an ordinary woman, Martha Ballard—as told in her own voice through the detailed diary she kept from 1785-1812—to tell a socioeconomic history of rural life in New England and to interpret the everyday struggle, violence and mundanity of women’s lives in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Combining elements of documentary and fiction, the filmmakers not only bring Martha Ballard to life on screen, but also illustrate the often hidden labor of historical research by showing Ulrich herself performing the detailed and expansive detective work of interpreting Ballard’s life through the document she has left behind.

Part of film series

Read more

Visions of Richard P. Rogers

Current and upcoming film series

Read more

Jean-Pierre Bekolo, 2024 McMillan-Stewart Fellow

Read more

The Practice (and Other Works) By Martín Rejtman

Read more

Chronicles of Changing Times. The Cinema of Edward Yang

Read more
Gene Hackman crouched beside a toilet with audio equipment

From the HFA Collection...

Read more

Being In a Place. Rediscovering Margaret Tait