A new book highlights the surprising European origins of an iconic American genre.
"Film Noir" is notoriously difficult to define. Once you move past the familiar images (trench coats, shadows), stock characters (the femme fatale, the private dick), standard moods (urban malaise, fatalism), and a core group of classic films (John Huston's "The Maltese Falcon," for example, or Tay Garnett's "The Postman Always Rings Twice"), there's wide disagreement among critics and scholars about what actually makes a movie "noir." Does film noir belong to a specific historical time and place (Hollywood from 1941 to 1958, say) or can it be made anywhere, at any time?
monochrom is an art-technology-philosophy group having its seat in Vienna and Zeta Draconis. monochrom is an unpeculiar mixture of proto-aesthetic fringe work, pop attitude, subcultural science, context hacking and political activism. Our mission is conducted everywhere, but first and foremost in culture-archeological digs into the seats (and pockets) of ideology and entertainment. monochrom has existed in this (and almost every other) form since 1993. [more]
