Skip to main content

NOIR Writing Workshop - Saturday January 21st from 1:30-3:30pm

Charong Chow's I Am The Daughter of Fu Manchu.

In my NOIR Writing Workshop at the Central Sierra Arts Council, 193 S. Washington Street, Sonora, this Saturday January 21st from 1:30pm-3:30pm, I will be exploring one of the most compelling genres of literature and film.


Tickets are $25 for adults - and $15 for students. There will also be a lunch before the workshop at Emberz, 177 S. Washington Street, from 11:30am-1:30pm. Everyone is welcome!


With style, content and psychological exploration that grew originally out of the German Expressionism of the 1920s - but which is most associated with American "hard boiled" thrillers, gangster stories and unconventional love stories of the 1930s-1950s - noir has influenced everything and everyone from Alfred Hitchcock to David Lynch, from Jean-Luc Godard's Breathless to Christopher Nolan's Batman movies and the dark tone and complex psychology of Inception.


Please join us from 1:30-3:30pm on Saturday to discuss and enjoy excerpts from some of the acclaimed classics of noir - including Dashiell Hammett's The Maltese Falcon, James L Cain's The Postman Always Rings Twice, and more radical "future noir" or "neo noir" works such as Ridley Scott's sci-fi classic, Blade Runner - which mixed the feel of a 1940s noir thriller with a dark yet dazzling futuristic Los Angeles.

Blade Runner's dark, noir, futuristic Los Angeles of 2019.
In addition, we will have Charong Chow reading from her new "teen noir" novel, Random, and discussing how she transformed the real life events surrounding the death at 26 of her childhood friend, Jeremy, into a contemporary teen love story and thriller, heavily influenced by noir literature and movies.


There will also be a special screening of Charong's short film, I Am The Daughter of Fu Manchu.


David Lynch's Mulholland Drive.
This black and white film, made on 8mm stock while Charong was a student at Cal Arts in Los Angeles - and both directed by her and starring her in the title role - uses the strongly noir-influenced Hollywood stereotypes of Asian women and men to explore the racial underpinnings of such films as the popular Fu Manchu series, including 1931's Daughter Of The Dragon.


In particular, it  exposes the kind of roles America's most famous Chinese-American movie star, Anna May Wong, was forced to play.

I hope you can join us on Saturday at the Arts Council - and, if possible, at Emberz for lunch from 11:30am-1:15pm - for what I believe will be one of our most fascinating workshops yet.


Thanks, as always, to Yvonne and the wonderful staff at the Starbucks at The Junction for providing free coffee for everyone.


For more information - and to reserve seats at Emberz - please email me at: tranquilbuddha@gmail.com or call me at: 310-383-7562.

Warmest wishes,
Alexander
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Please note that for reasons I have not been able to solve yet, I have enormous difficulty posting replies to comments - so I apologize if I don't reply!

Popular posts from this blog

The High Tower Apartments and The Long Goodbye

Photograph by Dwayne Moser. This beautiful apartment complex in Los Angeles is called the Hightower or High Tower Complex (the High Tower name refers to the central elevator, I believe), and was designed in 1935-1936 by architect  Carl Kay - and made famous in 1973 by my favorite film, Robert Altman's The Long Goodbye (see Why I Love Robert Altman's The Long Goodbye ). Although Altman used the building as Philip Marlowe's apartment in his somewhat post-modern Long Goodbye (the film plays with references to Old Hollywood and opens and closes with the song, Hooray For Hollywood ), the building has another direct connection to Raymond Chandler. It was apparently the inspiration for Chandler in his book, The High Window (the first Chandler novel I ever read), in which Chandler describes the residence of Philip Marlowe as being on the cliffs above High Tower Drive in a building with a fancy elevator tower. (Thanks to the Society of Architectural Historians Southern...
4 comments
Read more

Thank You Sonora ER, Dr Trujillo and Dr Johnson.

Microphone stand designed by Hudson. Our eight year old son, Hudson, has been having severe abdominal pain over the past week to ten days, and this week we took him to see Dr Jennifer Neufeld-Trujillo , one of our regular pediatricians at the Forest Road Pediatric Clinic in Sonora, and also to ER at Sonora Regional Medical Center. We just want to say a big thank you to everyone - including all the very friendly and helpful staff at ER - for their care of and concern for Hudson, who is gradually starting to feel better. We would also like to make a special mention of Dr Lisa Johnson , who was on call tonight for Forest Road Pediatrics, and who had a long telephone conversation with me, in which she answered many questions with a depth of knowledge and experience that was both highly reassuring and informative, and who left us feeling confident that we are on the right path for the weekend - always a difficult time when your child is not feeling well. Hopefully, Hudson will cont...
Post a Comment
Read more

Hyperbole And A Half - Why I'll Never Be An Adult

All images copyright 2010-2012 Allie and Hyperbole And A Half. These images are from one of my absolute favorite online comic strips/blogs/sites, Hyperbole And A Half by Allie . This particular post is called: This Is Why I'll Never Be An Adult - and these are just a few selected panes from a very funny and telling sequence: To check out the entire strip, go to this particular link for Hyperbole And A Half.   You might also want to check out the Hyperbole And A Half Store , which has many goodies such as this wonderful Bird T-shirt . Other designs can be applied to whole variety of products, such as T-shirts, mugs and iPhone cases (please note that not all designs are available for every product). I love the Bird T-shirt  because it makes me think of our much adored lovebird, Miso, who I'm certain spends a great deal of his life squawking these words in a language we can't comprehend because we're too stupid: Please visit Hyperbole And A ...
Post a Comment
Read more