Voice-Over and the Memory of Trauma: Narrating the Cultural Revolution in <i>The Blue Kite</i> and <i>Xiu Xiu</i>

Abstract This paper argues that voice-over narration functions as a crucial cinematic site of memory work in two post-Mao Chinese films, The Blue Kite (1993) and Xiu Xiu: The Sent Down Girl (1998). Revisiting the trauma of the Cultural Revolution, these films employ dissonant narrating voices that expose the friction between private recollection and publicly sanctioned history. Drawing on film sound theory and trauma studies, the paper shows that voice-over serves as a reflective mode of testimony. Rather than functioning merely as a narrative device, it emerges as a register of trauma, articulating history through fragmented, belated, and uncertain memory. Ultimately, these films reject narrative closure in favor of formal ambiguity, using displaced voices to interrogate the limits of representation and the ethical tensions inherent in narrating historical pain.