A new international cultural platform building sustained dialogue between Asia and Europe across cinema, contemporary art, science and ideas. Cinema is our point of departure — not our boundary.
The Third Shore is an international cultural platform founded to create sustained dialogue between Asia and Europe across cinema, contemporary art, science, ideas and cultural practice.
Rather than treating East and West as settled cultural positions, The Third Shore proposes another space between them — where different disciplines, histories and ways of seeing can encounter one another without needing to collapse their differences.
Cinema is one point of departure, but not a boundary. Through conversations, artistic interventions, commissions and carefully constructed gatherings, the platform brings together filmmakers, artists, thinkers, scientists and institutions whose work crosses established fields.
The platform works on a simple principle: ideas should not remain abstract. They should move between disciplines, take material form, enter space and become conversation.
Launched in Venice in September 2026, the Founding Edition is the first chapter of what is conceived as a long-term cultural platform — not a one-off event.
To build a long-term international platform connecting Asia and Europe — beginning in Venice, growing from a founding gathering into an active ecosystem of exchange.
The platform moves across disciplines that are too often kept apart
To develop The Third Shore as a permanent platform for conversations, artistic collaborations, commissions and gatherings connecting Asia and Europe — with cinema remaining one of its central points of departure.
Venice was the founding gesture. The next stage is to build the space around it — a long-term platform structured around three connected strands.
Using film and festival contexts as a common language for international exchange, production and co-production. Its producing slate already includes features in development with leading Asian artists and award-winning directors, and a co-production entering pre-production with a Berlinale Talents-selected director.
Commissioning and presenting artistic interventions that translate ideas into material, image and space. One to two international exhibitions are already scheduled for next year, developed with leading international artists and master craftspeople.
Continuing to convene an annual dialogue with leading European academic institutions and scholarly foundations, keeping research in continuous exchange with the artists, filmmakers and institutions the platform works with — and providing a stable structure around which new collaborations can take shape.
What made the Founding Edition distinctive was not the number of disciplines represented, but the level of responsibility within them — people accustomed to making decisions were placed where the usual professional boundaries mattered less.
The names remain off the record. The fields represented around the table, however, show its unusual range — and the conversations that followed.
The morning — the exhibition, the founders, the panel — and the evening — the installation and the founding dinner — each found its chronicler.
“In Venice, two producers from cinema — Bowen Sun and Jane Yao — imagine a third shore between East and West, where science, art and film finally meet.”
Read the full story“At Casa dei Tre Oci, the table is not merely the place of dinner, but a threshold between cultures, epochs and disciplines — the first artistic project commissioned by The Third Shore.”
Read the full storyVenice was the founding gesture. The next stage is to build the conditions in which relationships between filmmakers, artists, scientists, cultural institutions, journalists, investors and other decision-makers can develop over time — and we are looking for the partners who want to shape it from the beginning.