The 16th Annual Sidewalk Film Festival August 22-24
7-24-2014: We will continue to add details to this schedule as the Festival approaches. Please bookmark the page so that you can find the schedule easily.
Sidewalk Film Festival is produced by the Alabama Moving Image Association, a federally recognized 501c3 non-profit organization with a mission to inspire, encourage and support filmgoers, the city of Birmingham and the filmmaking community. In addition to hosting the annual film festival, we host monthly networking and educational events, a monthly documentary series, short film and screenwriting competitions, manage a youth board and a variety of other year-round programs.
Tickets sales to our events cover approximately 1/3 of our annual operating cash budget, so we depend on corporate sponsors, grant-making organizations and individuals like you to survive. if you’d like to know more about supporting Sidewalk, please contact us at sidewalk@sidewalkfest.com.
THE SEARCH FOR GENERAL TSO is a feature-length documentary tracing the origins of Chinese American food through what is arguably America’s most popular takeout meal––General Tso’s Chicken.
Anchoring the film is an upbeat quest, through small towns and big cities across America and beyond, to understand the origins and popularity of Chinese American food and its top-selling dish. Who was General Tso? And why do nearly fifty thousand restaurants serve deep-fried chicken bearing his name?
Using this Americanized dish and its mysterious mastermind as a lens onto a larger story of immigration, adaptation, and innovation, the film follows a lighthearted journey, grounded in cultural and culinary history, through restaurants, Chinatowns, and the American imagination. Visits to present-day Chinese restaurants spark forays into the past, guided by chefs, scholars, and the occasional opinionated customer. The film’s lively soundtrack and shadow-puppet animations contribute both whimsy and momentum, as viewers find they’re on a search to answer a deeper question: how did America’s Chinese food become so… American?
