James Devereaux’s Noir-ish Project Is Released Worldwide On VOD

A BRAND NEW CUT OF NOIR-ISH PROJECT NOW AVAILABLE ON VIMEO-ON-DEMAND

Director’s Note.
July, 2019. 

We made Noir-ish Project throughout 2013. What started off as a filmmaking exercise quietly transformed into a carefully composed feature film. To borrow from Melville and Rivette, I intentionally undercooked the script so that it had the feeling of a draft rather than a fully realised dramatic work, and I view “Noir-ish Project” as a label rather than as a title.

The idea was to start off with a classical narrative and diffuse it over time, so that the film would eventually grind to a halt. Referencing No Wave Cinema, I staged scenes in spots where I used to hang-out and pass-by every day, in and around Shoreditch in London. The area was undergoing great change, and, inspired by Aki Kaurismäki’s I Hired A Contract Killer, I thought we might preserve some of it before it was swept away by ‘progress’. At the time I was not entirely convinced by the strategy, but now I am. We managed to capture in our film for example, The Birdcage, a proper boozer on Columbia Road, which was subsequently turned into the blandest of gastro-pubs. But some small shard of that culture, however, can now be seen in Noir-ish Project.

I completed a new cut of the film earlier this year, and re-upholstered the visuals so that now they are less gritty but more cinematic. This is the version which has now been made available worldwide through video-on-demand.

Noir-ish Project (66 mins, UK, 2014) 

Bleak, melancholy, neorealist feature film masquerading as film noir. A couple of low-lifes try to make some quick cash but end up just waiting around.

Noirish Project is a melancholy and gently comic feature film about Billy, who steals his family’s precious pearls and hands them over to low-life Jimmy (played by James Devereaux), who in turn takes them to a fence. But when the pearls turn out to be fake, Jimmy barely escapes from the fence with his life, let alone the pearls. Billy and Jimmy endevour to get the pearls back before Billy’s family finds out they’re gone, but when the fence goes missing, they realise their story has only just begun.

Shot in black and white, Noirish Project is a neo-realist fantasy, featuring moments of peculiar poetry and gentle comedy.

Written & directed by James Devereaux.

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