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