Film Screening and Discussion of Richard Fung’s film Nang by Nang
With post-screening discussion with Film Director Richard Fung and Dr. Tzarina T. Prater (Bentley University)

Wednesday, 20 February 2019
7:30-9:30 pm
College Avenue Student Center, Multipurpose Room
Rutgers University, New Brunswick

About Nang by Nang:

Nang has lived outside the box. Born in a Trinidadian village in 1934, she grew up poor, illegitimate, mixed-race and female, but she survived by defying convention. She left the first of five husbands when he cheated on her. With no formal training, she danced with choreographer Geoffrey Holder, who later won Tony Awards for The Wiz. In her twenties, she went to work in the Orinoco delta in Venezuela, and saved enough to buy a house. She started university in New York in her 40s. Stubbornness, resourcefulness, and resilience have allowed Nang to surmount life’s scars and tragedies. In this vivid portrait, filmmaker Richard Fung gets to know his previously unknown first cousin at her current home in New Mexico and on the road in Trinidad.

About Richard Fung:

Richard Fung is a Toronto-based video artist, writer, theorist, and educator. He holds a degree in cinema studies as well as an ME in sociology and cultural studies, both from the University of Toronto. He is Associate Professor in the Integrated Media program at the Ontario College of Art and Design. His work comprises of a series of challenging films on subjects ranging from the role of the Asian male in gay pornography to colonialism, immigration, racism, homophobia, AIDS, and his own family history. His films, which include My Mother’s Place (1990), Sea in the Blood (2000), and Uncomfortable (2005), have been widely screened and collected internationally, and have been broadcast in Canada and the United States. His essays have been published in many journals and anthologies. Fung is a past Rockefeller Fellow at New York University and has received the Bell Canada Award for Lifetime Achievement in Video as well as the Toronto Arts Award for Media Art.

About Tzarina Prater:

Tzarina T. Prater is an Associate Professor of English in Bentley University’s English and Media Studies Department where she teaches Literature, Cultural, and Digital Media Studies. She has published articles on the work of Easton Lee, Kerry Young, Michelle Cliff, Patricia Powell, U.S. spectatorship of Hong Kong action cinema, digital platforms, and science fiction. Her articles have appeared in Anthurium: A Caribbean Studies Journal, Small Axe: a Caribbean Platform for Criticism, Journal of African American Studies. Her current book project on Chinese Jamaican literary and cultural production is entitled Labrish and Mooncakes: Chinese Jamaican Cultural Production and Nationalism. Dr. Prater is an alumna of the Rutgers English graduate program.