Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: http://theses.ncl.ac.uk/jspui/handle/10443/6024
Title: Independent Chinese Eco-Documentary: Cinematic Encounters with Post-Socialist Development and the Anthropocene Crisis
Authors: McGeorge, Kelly Anne
Issue Date: 2023
Publisher: Newcastle University
Abstract: Independent Chinese eco-documentary has received insufficient academic attention within existing English-language scholarship about Mainland Chinese independent film and ecocinema. This research gap fails to recognize the importance of ‘independence’ to the existence and survival of ecocinema practice within this socio-political and film production context. Inadequate ecocritical paradigms of human-nature relations in post-socialist China also prevent academic engagement with Anthropocene awareness in indie ecocinema. This thesis investigates how indie Chinese eco-documentaries represent the socioenvironmental problems arising from the post-socialist period and the Anthropocene epoch, with a focus on how eco-filmmakers employ different cinematic techniques and documentary approaches to guide audiences’ interpretative journeys through the text. It is hypothesized that indie Chinese eco-documentaries pose a collective challenge to official state narratives around economic development. The main methodological approach will be constituted by the close textual analysis of nine indie Chinese eco-documentaries in dialogue with affective, material and process-relational ecological approaches. This will be further supported by the implementation of the Anthropocene as an ecocritical paradigm and the introduction of the technosphere concept as a theoretical and structural framework. Adopting a follow-the-thing approach along the nodes of economic development over its four chapters – Extraction, Construction, Ruins, and Waste - this thesis embarks upon a cinematic journey through the Anthroposcapes of post-socialist China. Chapter 1 traces the parasitic boom-and-bust economic cycle of extractive mining industries. Chapter 2 dissects the political performances surrounding infrastructure projects. Chapter 3 unearths socio-spatial resistance to urban redevelopment in modern megacities. Chapter 4 wades into waste management and recovery crises arising from national and global flows of urban waste. By raising awareness about the unique contribution of this film sub-culture, this thesis aims to not only highlight the political potential of ecocinema practice within Mainland China but also prevent the physical and cultural erasure it faces from rising political restrictions
Description: Ph. D. Thesis.
URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10443/6024
Appears in Collections:School of Modern Languages

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