Sponsored Project
The Search for General Tso
Filmmaker: Co-Directors: Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis; Producers: Julia Marchesi and Jennifer 8. Lee
Fiscal Sponsorship Year: 2011
Film Type: Documentary
From the author of the bestselling “Fortune Cookie Chronicles” and the Peabody-winning filmmakers of King Corn comes the story of a box of chicken, a Chinese general, and the cultural and culinary diaspora that brought them together. The Search for General Tso follows fried chicken, steamed broccoli and white rice on a far-ranging trail: across the U.S. in an exploration of how 40,000 Chinese restaurants colonized the countryside; back in time to the dish’s origins at a New York restaurant; and around the world to the Hunan hometown of a military mastermind Americans imagine to be a culinary genius: Zuo Zongtang.