Celebrate Lunar New Year with a feast of content on SBS and SBS On Demand

Celebrate Lunar New Year with a feast of content on SBS and SBS On Demand

17 January, 2024

Media releases

SBS is sharing the festivity and culture of Lunar New Year with movies, food programs, recipes, documentaries, and more to welcome the Year of the Dragon.

For four weeks starting Monday 29 January, SBS is celebrating Lunar New Year with a feast of multi-platform content for all Australians to enjoy, partnering with community groups to bring cultural events to every state and territory, and producing teaching resources through educational arm SBS Learn.

Befitting the most auspicious year of the zodiac, SBS is launching its greatest celebration of Lunar New Year yet for the Year of the Dragon in 2024 for all Australians, said SBS Managing Director, James Taylor.

As the multilingual and multicultural national broadcaster, SBS is proud to be the home of cultural celebrations and sharing cross-cultural knowledge and understanding.

This year, SBS will celebrate Lunar New Year with stories of traditions and culture in more than six languages and in which many Australians will be able to see themselves and their families reflected and embraced.

New premieres on SBS to mark the Year of the Dragon include three-part documentary series The Silk Road From Above uncovering the first true path of globalisation, as well as Hollywood production The Farewell starring Awkwafina (Ocean's Eight, Crazy Rich Asians) on SBS Viceland, unravelling the story of a young, Chinese-born, U.S.-raised woman and her dying grandmother.

SBS On Demand has curated a Lunar New Year hub of bingeable movies themed around power, success, honour, luck, family and feasts. Titles include Hong Kong action film The Heroic Trio starring Oscar-winning actor Michelle Yeoh; Chinese historical drama Brotherhood of Blades following the story of palace guards in the late Ming Dynasty; 2021 Korean film The Box starring K-pop singer and actor Chanyeol; and Lucky Grandma starring Chinese actor and singer Tsai Chin best known for her role in The Joy Luck Club.

SBS World Movies will be showing fan favourites and contemporary classics from Saturday 10 February to Wednesday 14 February, including The Handmaiden (Korean), Taste (Vietnamese), One Second (Chinese), and Kung Fu Yoga (Chinese). Fans of Donnie Yen, Jet Li and Maggie Cheung are in for a marathon of martial arts actions movies: Chasing the Dragon, Bodyguards and Assassins, The Lost Bladesman, The One, Unleashed, and Hero presented by Quentin Tarantino.

SBS is partnering with 23 Lunar New Year community events across Australia.

Photo by Ashley Mar

On SBS Food, five new food series will premiere over the Lunar New Year celebrations including Malaysia Gourmet with Justine Schofield (from Monday 29 January at 7.30pm), Seoul at Home (from Monday 5 February at 5pm), Taiwan Bites (from Wednesday 7 February at 5pm) Hidden Gems (from Monday 19 February at 5pm), and What Chefs Want (from Tuesday 27 February at 5pm). Foodies can also find more than 120 Lunar New Year celebration recipes to liven up their summertime meals.

Feature stories and explainers on culture, community and art, together with festival guides, competitions and more, will be published in more than six languages including Cantonese, English, Korean, Mandarin, Nepali, and Vietnamese.

SBS Mandarin is uncovering the impact of Processional Dragons for the Chinese community in Bendigo during the Gold Rush. SBS Vietnamese will produce a My Lunar New Year series capturing the celebrations of Vietnamese-Australians including former refugees, second-generation immigrants, international students and others. SBS Korean will share stories on traditional clothing, food and music, and the benefits of bilingual education by highlighting 68 schools across Australia teaching the Korean language. SBS Cantonese will produce a four-part podcast series on feng shui for the Year of the Dragon, interactive online trivia questions, and a story on dragon and lion dancing.

SBS's educational arm SBS Learn has developed a range of creative and engaging primary and secondary school resources for teachers to kick off the year. Offering introductory activities to Lunar New Year as well as more focused activities around the Year of the Dragon, learners will discover how Chinese, Korean and Vietnamese communities mark this significant cultural event in Australia and elsewhere across the world.

SBS PopAsia - Australia's #1 destination for Asian pop music streaming 24/7 - will curate a special Lunar New Year soundtrack featuring Cantonese, Korean, Mandarin and Vietnamese hits on Saturday 10February from 12pm to 6pm.

As Australia's most diverse broadcaster, SBS is proudly sponsoring more than 23 community events across the country - including in key regional areas - in partnership with Multicultural NSW, Chinatown Adelaide, BrisAsia, Chung Wah Society in Darwin, Chung Wah Association Inc. in Perth, ACT City Renewal Authority, Chinese Community Association of Tasmania, National Chinese Museum of Australia in Bendigo, and more.

A full guide to Lunar New Year festivals and events can be found on the SBS website. The SBS On Demand 2024 Lunar New Year collection will be available from Monday 22 January at sbs.com.au/ondemand/collection/lunar-new-year. Watch the network promo here

For a PDF of this media release, click here

LINK:	https://www.sbs.com.au/aboutus/2024/01/17/celebrate-lunar-new-year-wit...
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