Fair or Festival

Chinatown Storytelling Festival

May 8 – May 20, 2025

From May 8 to 20, 2025, Chinatown Storytelling Festival is back for its second year! The Festival features screenings at DCTV’s Firehouse Cinema, workshops and presentations at Think!Chinatown’s Studio, and walking tours in the neighborhood. From a new mini-doc about Chinatown’s artisanal tofu produced by Think!Chinatown to treasures pulled from our community’s archives, this year will continue to highlight and celebrate stories from within the Chinatown community, and inform our next generations of storytellers to come.

Chinatown Storytelling Festival is a celebration of Think!Chinatown’s newly produced storytelling projects, as well as a deep dive across archives of short films about Chinatown. Chinatown Storytelling Festival aims to foster the creation and viewership of projects featuring our under-told stories.

Think!Chinatown is a place-based intergenerational non-profit in Manhattan’s Chinatown, working at the intersection of storytelling, arts, neighborhood engagement, and creative placekeeping. We believe the process of listening, reflecting and celebrating develops the community cohesion and trust necessary to work on larger neighborhood issues. By building strength from within our neighborhood, we can shape better policies and programs that define our public spaces, celebrate our cultural heritage and innovate how our collective memories are represented. T!C is the team powering the Chinatown Night Market, Chinatown Block Parties, Chinatown Arts Festival, Chinatown Storytelling Festival and more.

Chinatown Storytelling Festival is held on the unceded land of the Lenape peoples. Think!Chinatown’s cultural activities are supported, in part, with public funds from the New York City Dept of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council and by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature. Additional leadership support for Think!Chinatown is generously provided by the Andrew Mellon Foundation. T!C is also grateful for funding from New York City Dept of Small Business Services, Con Edison and many individual friends.