Sequence: Meta-Noir Narratives is a series of juxtaposed drawn images based on digital film stills. These still images are appropriated from motion picture DVDs and combined in order to form new poetic narratives. This appropriation allows me to reference characters and scenes of a given film to suggest a sense of déjà vu.
As I render these images on various scales I apply what I call a `noir filter.’ This filter is created by expressive application of ink onto paper while incorporating aesthetic conventions of film noir. According to Alain Silver and James Ursini authors of Film Noir, the film noir movement lasted from 1941 to 1958. The term film noir was originally used by French critics to describe the darkening of mood and subject matter in American cinema during that time. The visual iconography of the film noir movement includes chiaroscuro lighting, odd angles, moving cameras, urban landscapes, flashbacks and subjective camera. This visual vocabulary is inserted into two major themes of film noir. One of these themes is “the haunted past,” in which a character is escaping a past burden and seeks to conceal it in the dark world of film noir. The second major theme is the “fatalistic nightmare,” where the noir world revolves around causality (9–19).
Using this filter I am able to extract or change the essence of the image, to remove it from its original source and incorporate a sense of déjà vu. In order to achieve this déjà vu effect I try to promote the recollection of a viewer’s past film experiences. I am attempting to recall specific film memory without full recognition of a given film. The preferred result is for the viewer to have a new experience with indiscernible familiarity. The monochromatic noir filter also allows this image to be transported from its original source into the tone and mood of film noir. After the filter has been applied, images are placed into sequence to create a non-linear poetic narrative.