From November 22 to 23, 2025, the 2025 China Film Aesthetics Annual Conference, co-hosted by the China Film Art Research Center (China National Film Archive), Shenzhen University and Beijing Normal University, was grandly held at Shenzhen University. With the theme of "120 Years of Moving Images, A Century-long Journey of Film Aesthetics", the conference marked the significant milestones of the 120th anniversary of Chinese cinema and the 130th anniversary of world cinema. It systematically reviewed the evolutionary trajectory of Chinese film aesthetics and looked ahead to the future development of cinema amid the digital wave.

Discussions at the main forum of the annual conference covered multiple dimensions including film ontology, technological transformation, and regional moving images. Experts and scholars conducted in-depth deliberations on such topics as film ontology and aesthetic foundations, the opportunities and challenges brought by technological transformation to film aesthetics, and regional moving images and the cultural ecology of Chinese cinema.Rao Shuguang, President of the China Film Critics Association, argued that the film industry is currently confronted with a "triple transformation" involving economic structure, cultural community, and technological ecology. Against the backdrop of the rise of scene economy and open ecology, "community aesthetics" may emerge as a crucial theoretical fulcrum for the revitalization of cinema. Suo Yabin, Professor at the School of Theatre, Film and Television of Communication University of China, analyzed the commercial aesthetic ecology of Chinese films. He pointed out that although the complementary structure between theatrical and online releases maintains market stability, it has led to a chronic shortage in the supply of medium and low-budget genre films such as thrillers and art-house films, thereby resulting in a "genre contraction". Li Yang, Dean of the School of Arts of Peking University, held that there exists a striking disparity between the symbolic image of Northeast China in popular culture and its real historical and social experiences, and called for a return to regional realities themselves for moving image creation.

In addition to the main forum, the annual conference also held three parallel sub-forums simultaneously, themed "Historical Narratives of Chinese Film Aesthetics", "Existential Ecology of Contemporary Film Aesthetics" and "Regional Cinema as an Aesthetic Phenomenon". Participants engaged in in-depth discussions and exchanges from three perspectives: history, contemporaneity and regionalism.