How to Have an American Baby


Leslie Tai is a Chinese-American filmmaker who uses her fluency in her two cultures as access to make documentaries that illuminate the spaces where they intersect.

Artist Bio

There is a city in Southern California that is teeming with pregnant women from China. Told through multiple perspectives, this film travels deep into the booming shadow economy catering to Chinese birth tourists who travel to the US on birthing vacations, in order to obtain US citizenship for their babies.

How to Have an American Baby streamed on PBS’s POV from December 11, 2023 through March 10, 2024.


Award Year
2019
Status

Completed


Tai-Leslie

Leslie Tai

Bodega Bay, CA

Leslie Tai is a Chinese-American filmmaker based in the Bay Area in California. She has used her fluency in her two cultures as access to make documentaries that illuminate the spaces where they intersect. After graduating from UCLA, she made and exhibited her work in the New Independent Chinese Documentary Movement, as a student of Wu Wenguang, one of China’s leading radical filmmakers. Works like her short film The Private Life of Fenfen, a multi-layered representation of a young Chinese migrant worker’s video diaries, give a unique perspective into culture otherwise inaccessible to those on the outside.



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