Public Screening and Discussion, Monday, February 10, 7:00 PM Communications 150 (Theater C)
CDAR is pleased to co-sponsor this Visiting Artist’s Series screening of the feature-length creative documentary exploring Chinese birth tourism in Southern California. How to Have an American Baby is “a kaleidoscopic voyage into the shadow economy catering to Chinese tourists who travel to the US to give birth for citizenship. Told through a series of intimately observed vignettes, the story of a hidden global economy emerges-depicting the fortunes and tragedies that befall the ordinary people caught in its web.” (PBS/POV premiere 12.11.2023)
Leslie Tai is a Chinese-American filmmaker hailing from San Francisco, California. After graduating from UCLA with a B.A. in Design|Media Arts, Leslie moved to China on a U.S. Fulbright Scholarship in 2006. There, she earned her filmmaking chops in the underground Chinese documentary world as a student of Wu Wenguang, a founding figure of the New Chinese Documentary Movement. From 2007 to 2011, she made and exhibited films as an artist at Wu’s Beijing-based studio, Caochangdi Workstation. Tai is the recipient of a 2019 Creative Capital Award and a graduate of the MFA Program in Documentary Film and Video at Stanford University. Her short films have premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival, Visions du Réel (Nyon), International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA), The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), and broadcast on The New York Times.
Following the screening, Leslie Tai will be present for a Q&A moderated by Film + Digital Media Professor Yiman Wang.
As part of the Visiting Artist’s series, this event also includes a Masterclass with Leslie Tai on Tuesday, February 11, 11:40 AM – 2:40 PM. This will be a deep-dive conversation about structuring nonfiction films and her own process of making this ten-year project. While the workshop will be part of the second-year MFA editing class, it is open, as usual, for others to join. Those interested must RSVP to ilusztig@ucsc.edu in order to join. Masterclass will be held in the SocDoc Lab Seminar Room, West Side Research Park.