For much of its history, queer Chinese-language cinema has often been understood through narratives of marginalisation, secrecy, and survival. From censorship and social stigma to familial pressure and legal precarity, queer lives have frequently appeared on screen through the lens of struggle.

While these histories remain important, they are not the only stories that deserve to be told.
Pride in Ordinary Times brings together five short films from mainland China, the Chinese diaspora, and the United Kingdom that move beyond narratives of trauma to explore what happens after visibility. Rather than focusing solely on suffering, these works turn their attention towards everyday acts of becoming: falling in love, getting married, reconciling with family, negotiating faith, discovering desire, and learning to inhabit one's own body.

Taken together, the programme reveals a new generation of Chinese-language queer filmmakers increasingly concerned not only with resistance but also with subjectivity. These films ask how queer people imagine happiness, intimacy, pleasure, belonging, and futures for themselves. They remind us that pride is not always found in grand political gestures. Sometimes it exists in small conversations, private discoveries, moments of celebration, and the quiet courage of living authentically.

Moving between fiction, documentary, and experimental cinema, Pride in Ordinary Times offers a portrait of queer life that is at once personal and political, local and transnational, fragile and hopeful. Together, these works invite audiences to look beyond trauma and towards the diverse possibilities of queer existence today.