City for Humanity Forum 2023 held in Chengdu

On Oct 26, the second Sanlian City for Humanity Forum was held in Chengdu, Sichuan province. The annual forum, themed "Cities and Us: Public in Flux", invited eight speakers from the fields of architecture, art and humanities to discuss public space and publicness in cities from their different disciplinary backgrounds and perspectives. They explored how individuals can be "visible" in cities and how the experience of urban life can be approached from a human-centered perspective.

Dai Jinhua, professor in the faculty of Chinese literature and language at Peking University and a film researcher, noted that film art is an essential part of urban life. The process of watching a film is metaphorical to urban life, where strangers gather and then part ways in the cinema, gaining similar experiences and different insights. "Cinemas bring us together. The cinema itself is one of the important modern spaces," she says.