Film: “The Search for General Tso” with Ian Cheney

• Event Date: Thursday, November 12, 2015
• Time: 7:00 pm (CST)
• Location: Knight Auditorium, Spurlock Museum, 600 S. Gregory St., Urbana, IL
• Cost: Free Admission

• Film

This mouthwateringly entertaining film travels the globe to unravel a captivating culinary mystery. General Tso’s chicken is a staple of Chinese-American cooking, and a ubiquitous presence on restaurant menus across the country. But just who was General Tso? And how did his chicken become emblematic of an entire national cuisine? Director Ian Cheney journeys from Shanghai to New York to the American Midwest and beyond to uncover the origins of this iconic dish, turning up surprising revelations and a host of humorous characters along the way. Told with the verve of a good detective story, The Search for General Tso is as much about food as it is a tale of the American immigrant experience. A Sundance Selects release from IFC Films.

Ian Cheney is an Emmy-nominated and Peabody Award-winning filmmaker currently based in western Massachusetts. He grew up in Massachusetts and Maine, and received bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Yale University. After graduate school, Ian co-created, co-produced and starred in the feature documentary King Corn, which was released theatrically in 60 cities and awarded a George Foster Peabody Award in 2009. Ian subsequently directed the feature documentaryThe Greening of Southie, featured in The New Yorker and on Good Morning America; Truck Farm, the story of urban agriculture in New York City; The City Dark, a feature documentary about light pollution and the disappearing night; and The Search for General Tso, a feature documentary about American Chinese food. His most recent film, Bluespace, explores the terraforming of Mars and the waterways of New York City. He is a co-founder of FoodCorps, a nationwide public service organization. In 2011 he and longtime collaborator Curt Ellis were awarded the prestigious Heinz Award for their work in sustainability. In 2014-2015, Ian was a Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT. A visiting professor at the Università degli Studi di Scienze Gastronomiche, Ian travels frequently to show his films, lead workshops, and give talks about the human relationship to the natural world.

This Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities (IPRH) event is co-sponsored by Asian American Studies, East Asian Languages and Cultures, and the Spurlock Museum and is part of the IPRH Intersections event series.