NOIR CITY Film Festival

Did we shoot your mug at NOIR CITY 8?

A look at the set up and photo shoot

We set up camp on the mezzanine to take mug shots of the attendees

the noir city attendees line up to consider their crime and get their mug shot taken

in the thick of the action, a sizable crowd gathered to see people getting photographed

San Francisco and Noir

Film noir is a study in contrasts. It is light, and it is dark; it is morality and sin. It forces viewers to dwell in these absolutes on screen, and by default confront the more compelling places they suggest—the gray areas, the fabulous shadows in between. The great “heroes” of noir aren’t heroes at all. They are tough dames and hard-on-their-luck palookas; they are detectives that drink and curse and bed their partners’ wives. Gangsters, hoods, thieves, femme fatales, vixens, and common thugs. At various times noir films have us rooting for all of them.

The City by the Bay shares a common history with noir. It is a flawed, foggy, shadowed place, and yet it is electrifying. It was built by fortune-seekers and outcasts, and it continues to be shaped by them. And yet, like noir’s rabble-rousers, we root for our city. We love its foibles; we revel in its place on the fringe of society, on the very edge of the continent. We are noir citizens.

So it’s no accident that some of the most famous noir films are set right here, in our fair burg. San Francisco, after all, is a noir city.