About to become a father for the first time, film director Josh Appignanesi turned the camera on himself and his pregnant wife. But what started as a light-hearted project suddenly turned very serious
Devorah Baum is having a baby; her husband, Josh Appignanesi, is making a film about her having a baby. Or to be more precise, Josh’s film is about what he feels about the pregnancy: because it’s hard work, this pregnancy lark, for Josh. While Devorah is hoping against hope that, after three years of fertility treatment, the couple really are going to become parents, Josh is doing the really difficult bit of pregnancy: he’s having a full-on, no-holds-barred existential crisis. On camera.
How is it for a man in the 21st century when his partner is pregnant? History has changed everything: Stone Age Josh would have gone out hunter-gathering, prepared a safe nest, fought off intruders and brought back food. Modern-day Josh is sitting in his kitchen while his wife and her girlfriends shriek with delight at news of the conception; and then the further bit of news, which is that there are in fact two heartbeats, not one. He is looking very, very scared. What does pregnancy mean for a man in the 21st century? Josh isn’t the main earner. Devorah is the one with a job; Josh is the freelance, and right now he’s the freelance with no work. These were, in fact, the circumstances that led to the project. “Josh thought he was going to make a romcom in Italy,” says Devorah, when we meet at their house in west London. “And he said, if it falls through I’ll just have to make a film about us. And suddenly it did fall through, and there he was making this film about us.”
Continue reading...from Pregnancy | The Guardian http://ift.tt/2f3CqS0
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