Film noir in cross-cultural transplantation
Wu, Liaoliao (2025) Film noir in cross-cultural transplantation. PhD thesis, University for the Creative Arts.
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This practice-based PhD investigates the cross-cultural transplantation of film noir within contemporary Chinese cinema. Although global cinema scholarship highlights noir’s aesthetic reinvention potential, its inherently critical nature often conflicts with indigenous narrative structures and socio-political realities.
Chinese noir films have garnered international acclaim but faced domestic rejection, criticised as stylised yet emotionally hollow and externally oriented. To explore authentic noir narratives
grounded in Chinese realities, this research adopts a documentary-based methodology emphasising embodied subjectivity.
The resulting experimental documentary project, Noir Tracking, is structured around three interwoven narrative threads: spatial storytelling, femme fatale archetype interview, and behind-the-scenes production realities. The spatial storytelling includes Chinese cities - Harbin, Shenyang, Wuhan, and Chongqing; there are interviews with women who had personal proximity to criminal events that later became framed, in public discourse and media representation, through the film noir-inflected “femme fatale” archetype; the behind-the-scenes thread focuses on the production of the feature film Atonement, interviewing Oscar-nominated cinematographer Zhao Xiaoding, producer Ye Xiaoyin, and director Yu Guangyi. Employing audio-visual forms including film, video essay, animation, found footage, sound recording, and archival materials, this practice-based research presents my embodied experience in researching geographic noir narratives.
Rather than focusing solely on noir’s visual style, this project foregrounds its ethical, social, and narrative dimensions, offering a grounded, practice-led rethinking of noir as a critical lens through
which to understand localised trauma, moral ambiguity, and structural violence. By integrating theoretical inquiry with embodied filmmaking, this research contributes to the methodological expansion of global cinema studies. This practice-based inquiry foregrounds noir’s ethical and social dimensions, contributing to methodological expansion in global cinema studies and offering practical insights for developing noir within post-socialist, postcolonial contexts.
Thesis submitted in partial requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, University for the Creative Arts, Farnham.
Supervisor: Dr. Abigail Whittall.
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