Film: "The Farewell"

• Event Date: Friday, April 29, 2022
• Time: 2:00 pm (CDT)
• Location: Knight Auditorium, Spurlock Museum, 600 S. Gregory St., Urbana, IL
• Cost: Free

• Film

A film by Lulu Wang, 2019, 100 minutes.

In-person screening. Online panel discussion with scholar Beth Tsai (UC Santa Barbara) & Rancy Wang (Talent Manager)

CEAPS and the International Student Outreach team (external link) at the Counseling Center (external link) are hosting "The Farewell" in-person screening & online conversation not only to create a safe space for Asian/Asian American student communities to discuss the potential opportunities and challenges they may face historically and currently and reflect their own personal journey but also to promote the awareness of mental health for both domestic and international students around campus.

Film Summary

In this funny, uplifting tale based on an actual lie, Chinese-born, U.S.-raised Billi (Awkwafina) reluctantly returns to Changchun to find that, although the whole family knows their beloved matriarch, Nai-Nai, has been given mere weeks to live, everyone has decided not to tell Nai-Nai herself. To assure her happiness, they gather under the joyful guise of an expedited wedding, uniting family members scattered among new homes abroad. As Billi navigates a minefield of family expectations and proprieties, she finds there’s a lot to celebrate: a chance to rediscover the country she left as a child, her grandmother’s wondrous spirit, and the ties that keep on binding even when so much goes unspoken. With The Farewell, writer/director Lulu Wang has created a heartfelt celebration of both the way we perform family and the way we live it, masterfully interweaving a gently humorous depiction of the good lie in action with a richly moving story of how family can unite and strengthen us, often in spite of ourselves.

Panelists

Beth Tsai (external link), Visiting Assistant Professor, University of California, Santa Barbara

Beth Tsai is Visiting Assistant Professor in East Asian Languages and Cultural Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her research focuses primarily on the cinema of Taiwan, film festivals, and transnational film theory. She has published in the International Journal of Asia Pacific Studies, Quarterly Review of Film and Video, Journal of Asian Cinema, and Oxford Bibliographies. Her first book, Taiwan New Cinema at Film Festivals, is forthcoming with Edinburgh University Press.

Rancy Wang (external link), Former Talent Manager

Rancy Wang formerly worked in talent management in Los Angeles focusing on Asian talents such as Simu Liu (SHANG-CHI), Mike Moh (Bruce Lee in ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD), Hudson Yang (FRESH OFF THE BOAT) among over 150 clients. Previously, she was the producer of the Taipei Film Academy, collaborating with Hollywood professionals such as the Producers Guild of America (PGA), the WGA (Writers Guild), Disney, Pixar, DreamWorks, Nickelodeon, etc. She also represented the Taipei Film Commission at international film markets in Cannes, Berlin, Los Angeles, Hong Kong and Korea, organizing dozens of international film events on a global scale.