About Us

Beautiful, inspiring, educational films provide a forum for an event to create change in your community. Our film festival is designed to plant roots of on-going dialogue and the potential for transformation in your home town. It opens the door to network and communicate with other professionals, inspire and provide choices for expectant families, listen to their hopes and dreams and make money to fuel your organization to the next level.

Our Mission

The mission of BABY! International Film Festival is to offer film images that will deepen and expand our sense of trust about pregnancy, birth, and parenting. We believe many personal and social problems can be prevented or decreased by proper support of the family during pregnancy, birth and the first 5 years of the child’s life. In addition, we hold the intention to use the film festival event as a focal point for organizations providing services for families and children, encouraging them to network and giving them the opportunity to increase their public visibility. We place a particular emphasis on including young adults and people from all ethnic and racial origins, as we believe that it is through diversity and the voices of all ages that we may come into a state of deeper understanding of what it is means to be be born. Our productions aim to open your heart and mind to the true nature of babies.

Interested in forwarding this Natural Birth Movement?  Volunteering at the BABY International Film Festival?  Contact Us!

Directors

Debby Takikawa

Debby is the producer and director of What Babies Want, an award winning documentary film about babies. A chiropractor by formal training, Debby Takikawa founded the nonprofit organization, Beginnings, Inc. in 2001 as a way of supporting a clinic and teaching facility for children and their families who were facing attachment issues, birth trauma, and other health challenges. The clinic was also a teaching facility  serving intern candidates for the MFT program. The organization had a mandate for public outreach and education, and it was through this arm of the nonprofit that Debby set about to make the film What Babies Want.

Debby is currently traveling with the film, What Babies Want, and encouraging people in the birthing field to increase their public outreach. She is also co-author with Carrie Contey PhD, of the What Babies Want parenting book series, the first of which has been recently published.Debby lives on an organic flower and vegetable farm with her husband and her extended family. To learn more, or to make contact with Debby, visit her website at www.whatbabieswant.com

Advisors

David Tarleton Technical Advisor to BABY! International Film Festival

An award-winning producer, director and editor, David has created programs for Sony Pictures, The Muppets, The SyFy Channel, Walt Disney Pictures, Fox, Comedy Central, Disney Channel, Tokyopop, Mattel, Universal, Warner Brothers, Baby Einstein, Showtime and more. He is executive producer, director and editor of the new media comedy series Dorkumentary, starring Adria Dawn, and was editor of the Webby Award-winning Muppets series Statler and Waldorf From The Balcony, for Disney. His breakthrough film as producer/director/editor, the gothic fairy-tale Dinner, premiered at Slamdance, played on the SyFy Channel, and was released on DVD. David produced and edited the award-winning feature documentary What Babies Want, narrated by Noah Wyle, and its follow-up Reducing Infant Mortality. He produced and edited a series of documentaries for Sony Pictures, as well as serving as senior editor of The Pat Kilbane Show for Comedy Central. Besides making numerous films, series, commercials and trailers, David also produces and directs theatre, as well as being an accomplished musician, graphic artist and writer. He holds an M.F.A. in Cinema-Television from the University of Southern California. He is currently an Assistant Professor at Columbia College Chicago, teaching film directing and editing, and previously taught documentary production at UCLA.

I feel we have the capability to transform human life with a spiritual sensitivity to birth.