Film noir is subject of Rider’s annual film symposium

Film noir is the subject of the annual film symposium at Rider University, which returns to in-person programming this year on March 2 and 3. “In a Lonely Place: Film Noir, Past and Present” includes screenings, presentations by faculty, alumni, and students, as well as student screenwriting and film competitions.

This year, the symposium will include special guest speaker William G. Luhr, a professor of English at St. Peter’s University and widely published film scholar. His lecture is titled “America’s Underbelly: Film Noir and American Culture.”  

“The symposium is an opportunity for students and faculty to collaborate and share their work with a wider audience,” says Dr. Cindy Lucia, professor of film and television at Rider. “Students chose film noir as this year’s topic given its wide-ranging influence on contemporary film.”

Film noir describes a style of filmmaking characterized by crime, corruption, stylized lighting and doomed relationships. Its classic period began in the mid-1940s through the 1950s and is exemplified by hard-boiled classics like The Maltese Falcon, written and directed by John Huston and starring Humphrey Bogart, and Billy Wilder's Double Indemnity. 

Film noir themes have continued to influence contemporary film, with tropes showing up in films as varied as the erotic thriller The Last Seduction and the live-action/animated mash-up Who Framed Roger Rabbit?. Often referred to as neo-noir, these newer films include Blood Simple and Fargo, both directed and written by the Coen Brothers. The symposium will cover all of these films and more.

In his talk, scheduled for March 3 at 6:45 p.m., Luhr will discuss film noir’s connection to American culture. He is the author and co-author of many publications, including the books Film Noir in the New Approaches to Film Genre series and Thinking About Movies: Watching, Questioning, Enjoying and Film Noir, both published by Wiley Blackwell. Luhr has spoken about film noir at film festivals and universities throughout the world. For more than 20 years he has served as the co-chair of the Columbia University Seminar on Cinema and Interdisciplinary Interpretation.

Put on hiatus during 2021 because of the pandemic, the annual film symposium is designed to help build a film culture at Rider and the surrounding community through the exposure to cutting-edge film scholarship and significant classic and contemporary films. Previous symposia have examined cult classics, the film musical, films of The New Hollywood, and film comedy, among other topics. Previous guest speakers have included director Oliver Stone, author and Hal Ashby biographer Nick Dawson, and comic actor Tom Papa ’90

All symposium events are free and open to the Rider community and the general public. Events will be held in Rue Auditorium (Sweigart 115).