How to Have an American Baby (Film Screening + Q&A)

UPDATE: Due to inclement weather, the film screening event will now take place in Royce Hall Room 314.
For parking and directions to Royce Hall, please go to https://roycehall.org/visit/directions/

Note: This event is free and open to the public. Seating is available on a first-come, first-served basis.

Watch: "How to Have an American Baby" Film Trailer

Tracing the underground birth tourism industry from Beijing and Shanghai to Los Angeles, How to Have an American Baby is a feature-length creative documentary that takes us behind the closed doors of the booming shadow economy catering to Chinese tourists who travel to the U.S. to give birth—in order to obtain U.S. citizenship for their babies.

Told through a series of intimately observed, interwoven storylines, we meet expectant mothers, maternity hotel operators and operator wannabes, local doctors and civic officials, birth tourism agents in China, and the nannies, cooks, and chauffeurs that fuel this industry. Inside bedrooms, delivery rooms, and private family meetings, the story of a hidden global economy emerges – depicting the aspirations and anxieties, fortunes and tragedies that befall the ordinary people caught in the web of its influence.

How to Have an American Baby premiered at True/False Film Festival and then played as Centerpiece Film of San Francisco Documentary Film Festival and in the official selections of Austin Asian American Film Festival, San Diego Asian Film Festival, DOC NYC, and Cucalorus Film Festival. The film had its national broadcast premiere on December 11, 2023 as part of Season 36 of POV, America’s longest-running showcase on television for independent documentary films. The broadcast version of the film will be available to stream for free on PBS.org and the PBS app until March 10, 2024.

LESLIE TAI, Director, Producer, Cinematographer, Editor

Leslie Tai is an award-winning, Chinese-American filmmaker from San Francisco, CA. Her shorts have premiered at Tribeca Film Festival, MoMA’s Doc Fortnight, IDFA, and Visions du Réel. From 2006-2011, Tai studied under Wu Wenguang, a founding figure of the New Independent Chinese Documentary Movement, at his Beijing-based studio Caochangdi Workstation. Her short film The Private Life of Fenfen (2013), a multi-layered representation of a Chinese migrant worker’s video diaries, won “Best Film” awards at Kasseler Dokfest and Images Festival. In 2013, Tai received the “Emerging Filmmaker Award” from San Diego Asian Film Festival for her two shorts Grave Goods (2013), about the sublime objects of her deceased grandmother, and Superior Life Classroom (2012), about the Taiwanese immigrant housewives of Silicon Valley who sell Amway products. Her recent short My American Surrogate (2019), about Chinese elite hiring American surrogates to carry their babies for them, was commissioned by The New York Times Op-Docs series and The Pulitzer Center and won Best Short Documentary at San Diego Asian Film Festival. Her work is supported by organizations such as Creative Capital, Field of Vision, Fork Films, SFFILM, California Humanities, Firelight Media, and fellowships and residencies from MacDowell, Yaddo, Bogliasco, Wexner Center for the Arts, NYFF’s Artist Academy, and Berlinale Talents. Tai is a Fulbright Scholar to China and holds a BA in Design|Media Arts from UCLA and an MFA in Documentary Film/Video from Stanford University. How to Have an American Baby is Tai’s feature debut.

This event is presented by the UCLA School of Theater, Film & Television; Asia Pacific Center; Center for Chinese Studies; Asian American Studies Center; and Center for EthnoCommunications.