CiLENS 2025 - Year in Review
As 2025 comes to a close, we pause to reflect on a year shaped by continuity, resonance, and collective presence.
Throughout this year, all CiLENS programs were made possible with the generous support of the Berlin Senate Department for Culture and Social Cohesion, whose funding enabled us to carry out a full year of screenings, festivals, and community-based cultural work.
Throughout the year, CiLENS continued to explore cinema as a shared language — one that unfolds through images, conversations, and encounters. Across screenings, festivals, pop-up spaces, and interdisciplinary programs, we remained committed to cinema not only as an art form but as a social practice rooted in gathering, care, and community.
2025 Programs & Highlights
Year of the Snake — Chinese New Year Program
In January, CiLENS opened the year with a vibrant Chinese New Year program in collaboration with Sinema Transtopia, bringing together film screenings, Mahjong, karaoke, and shared meals in celebration of the Year of the Snake.
Spanning five days, the program presented five films ranging from contemporary works to timeless classics, including Berlin and Germany premieres. By weaving together cinema, food, and participatory activities, the program fostered a warm and inclusive space for audiences to connect through memory, identity, and shared cultural experience. As the first program of the year, it set the tone for CiLENS’ 2025 activities — affirming cinema as a lived, communal experience.
Plum Rain Murmurs｜南国有雨
In April, CiLENS presented Plum Rain Murmurs in collaboration with Sinema Transtopia, a poetic program revisiting classic works such as Green Snake and Rouge. More than half of the screenings reached full capacity, reflecting a strong and attentive audience response.
Rather than aiming for spectacle, Plum Rain Murmurs unfolded as a contemplative encounter with memory, desire, and emotional landscapes shaped by time and place. The program demonstrated the continued resonance of classic cinema within contemporary contexts, and CiLENS’ ability to cultivate sustained engagement through carefully curated, intimate programming.
Open-Air Chinese Film Nights: Forbidden Love — 3rd Edition
In June, CiLENS concluded the latest chapter of its Open-Air Chinese Film Nights in collaboration with The Feuerle Collection, marking two unforgettable evenings of cinema, performance, and gathering. Both nights played to full houses, with the first evening culminating in a celebratory late-night party.
Since 2022, the Open-Air series has invited audiences to experience Sinophone cinema as a total aesthetic encounter — where film meets tea, live performance, sound, and seasonal atmosphere. This final edition brought together live music, performative gestures, curated tea practices, and collective celebration, transforming the screenings into an immersive, sensorial experience.
Asian Queers Reunited — 2nd Edition
In July, CiLENS presented the second edition of Asian Queers Reunited in collaboration with Sinema Transtopia, welcoming more than 500 participants over several days of screenings, workshops, and conversations.
From open-air short film programs to feature-length documentaries, filmmaker and curator talks, and a participatory workshop, the program brought together a constellation of queer Asian voices across regions and disciplines. The strong turnout and sustained engagement reaffirmed Asian Queers Reunited as a vital platform for queer Asian storytelling, community-building, and collective imagining of queer futures.
Summer Pop-Up Teahouse: Lingering Grounds, Drifting Encounters
In August, CiLENS hosted a Summer Pop-Up Teahouse in collaboration with C*SPACE, welcoming over 30 participants into an intimate, multi-sensory gathering space.
Through tea, film, ambient sound performance, and shared reflection, Lingering Grounds, Drifting Encounters invited participants to slow down and remain present with memory, music, and storytelling. Though small in scale, the gathering unfolded as a deeply resonant encounter, emphasizing attentiveness, care, and intimacy as essential dimensions of cultural practice.
Berlin x Chengdu · Sichuanationship — 4th Edition
Later in August, CiLENS returned to ZK/U – Zentrum für Kunst und Urbanistik in collaboration with ZK/U for the fourth edition of Berlin x Chengdu, welcoming over 300 audience members to a completely full cinema.
Tracing humor, resilience, and emotional continuity through a curated selection of films, the evening culminated in Chengdu Rainbow. Beyond the screen, audiences gathered around Sichuan street food and a rooftop live performance, extending the cinematic experience into shared celebration. The overwhelming response confirmed Berlin x Chengdu as one of CiLENS’ most rooted and widely embraced long-term formats, bridging cities, communities, and everyday cultural sensibilities.
Indie Chinese Cinema Week (ICCW) — 4th Edition
In November, CiLENS presented the 4th edition of Indie Chinese Cinema Week (ICCW) in collaboration with Moviemento, Germany’s oldest independent arthouse cinema. Over four days, the festival welcomed more than 700 audience members, with over half of the screenings sold out.
This year’s program brought together narratives of migration, gender dynamics, ethnic minority experiences, labor, and belonging, accompanied by in-depth post-screening conversations with filmmakers, scholars, and editors. Many of these exchanges continued informally in the cinema lounge, transforming the festival into an ongoing space of dialogue rather than a series of isolated screenings. The strong response once again affirmed ICCW as a central pillar of CiLENS’ curatorial practice.
Looking Ahead
In the year to come, we will continue to explore new formats, deepen long-term partnerships, and cultivate spaces where cinema can be experienced as both artistic expression and collective practice.
We are deeply grateful to all who have walked alongside us, especially our long-term collaborators, as well as team members, partners, and audiences. Your presence and support sustain this work.
Thank you for being part of CiLENS.
We look forward to continuing this journey together.
With gratitude,
CiLENS