OPEN CALL | Liu Shiming Art Foundation 2025 Screening Series
Wed, May 21
|New York
Theme: Everyday Memory in Motion Submission Period: May 15 – June 20, 2025
Time & Location
May 21, 2025, 7:00 PM – Jun 20, 2025, 12:00 AM
New York, 15 E 40th St 5th FL, New York, NY 10016, USA
About the event
Liu Shiming Art Foundation 2025 Screening Series Open Call
Theme: Everyday Memory in Motion
Submission Period: May 15 – June 20, 2025
The Liu Shiming Art Foundation is announcing our first Open Call for the 2025 edition of the Screening Series. This year’s theme, “Everyday Memory in Motion,” invites emerging filmmakers and video artists to submit moving image works that explore how culture, memory, and identity are carried, embodied, and transformed through the gestures of everyday life.
Submissions will be accepted from May 15 to June 20, 2025. Selected works will be presented in two or three public screenings at the Liu Shiming Art Gallery & Foundation in Midtown Manhattan during Summer/Fall 2025, in tandem with the Gallery’s upcoming exhibition People Everyday, which features artworks by Hank Willis Thomas and Liu Shiming on May 27, 2025.
Reimagining the Everyday
Building on the success of two previous screening events in 2024 and 2025, this year’s Open Call is directly inspired by the exhibition People Everyday, which brings together two artists separated by time and place but united by a shared commitment to portraying ordinary life. Through this, we invite video submissions that center community, labor, intimacy, and inherited practices—not as peripheral stories, but as essential threads of cultural heritage.
What rituals, gestures, or routines sustain memory across generations? What lives and bodies are entrusted with carrying cultural meaning? How do acts of caregiving, migration, or resistance shape collective identity and belonging?
Submission Guidelines
Artists may submit work in a range of formats, including but not limited to:
● Narrative short films
● Documentary or ethnographic works
● Experimental or hybrid video
● Video essays
● Archival remix or found footage
● Performance or installation-based video
Works under 60 minutes are preferred. We strongly encourage submissions from underrepresented voices and communities working across diverse cultural and geographic contexts.
Public Screenings & Programming
Selected works will be showcased at least two public events in New York City, hosted at the Liu Shiming Art Gallery& Foundation(15 E 40th Street, 5th Floor, NYC). Each screening will include:
● In-person Q&A with selected filmmakers
● Moderated conversations with invited curators or scholars
● Promotional features on the Foundation’s digital platforms and social channels
Selection Panel
Entries will be reviewed by a panel of artists, scholars, and curators with a demonstrated commitment to independent media and cultural storytelling. Confirmed jurors include:
● Chirui Cheng. Program & Screening Lead, Editor at Liu Shiming Art Foundation
● Huilin Chen. Producer; Programmer, Nooks & Crannies Screening Series @ UnionDocs
● Emann Odufu. Creative Producer, Curator, Art Critic, Filmmaker, current Senior Integrated Producer at FCB New York, curator of exhibition People Everyday featuring Hank Willis Thomas & Liu Shiming
How to Submit
All submissions must be received by June 20, 2025.
Submission Here:
For additional questions, please contact:
ccheng@lsmartfund.org or info@lsmartfund.org
About the Liu Shiming Art Foundation
The Liu Shiming Art Foundation is dedicated to preserving and promoting the artistic legacy of Chinese sculptor Liu Shiming (1926–2010), whose work captured the everyday lives of workers, mothers, and common people with intimacy and strength. Through exhibitions, fellowships, screenings, and community programs, the Foundation supports emerging artists whose practices engage with identity, memory, and cross-cultural dialogue.
Our Screening Series is one of several initiatives aimed at expanding public engagement with moving image art. By spotlighting works that center personal and cultural narratives, we create space for artists to reimagine how their practices can be seen and heard.