YELLOW IS THE NEW NOIR
By Vikram Sharma
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Semih Tareen is on a mission to teach all of us the definition of yellow. It’s not just a color, he says, it’s a world of film that’s been largely forgotten. In his first foray behind the lens, Tareen’s short film Yellow is an exercise in the art of Giallo, which literally means “yellow” in Italian and was the name given to a genre of film proliferate during the 1960’s and 70’s in Italy.
“There were these Italian pulp, crime novels in the 1950’s and they were all printed with yellow covers,” he says. Mario Bava’s 1964 classic Blood and Black Lace began the Giallo movement.
Yellow’s appearance in SIFF follows a whirlwhind tour on the international festival circuit. “The first thing I did was put it on YouTube,” Tareen says. “Believe it or not, within one week, I got an email from the Sao Paolo International Short Film Festival saying they wanted to show my film. That gave me the encouragement I needed. From there, I got in touch with several magazines and festivals. I even sent Mario Bava’s son a copy of the film. I never heard back, so I don’t know if I insulted him or his father.”
Some of the signature trademarks of the Giallo genre were the plethora of beautiful women in dire situations, and the deranged killer, with characters often denoted by close ups of their hands and personal objects such as gloves. There was also a stylized use of colored light and, at times, frenetic camerawork. In the score, eerily melodramatic orchestrations in the 1960’s gradually gave way to more synth-based scores in the 1970’s.
Tareen began as a composer of film scores before moving into the director’s chair. Born in Turkey, he began learning the piano at age 5 and by his teens had decided to become a film composer. His family immigrated to Seattle in the mid-90’s. “I was lucky in that Seattle had one of the best film music schools in the world, The Pacific Northwest Film Scoring Program.”
After graduating, he worked as a film composer for several years before enrolling at Seattle Film Institute in 2005. At SFI he began making Yellow, when his class chose the script as a class project.
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Yellow: Watch the entire film (6 min 47 sec)
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“Giallos are highly stylized, which I enjoy,” he says. “A big part of it was homework. I ended up going back and watching all those old movies. Mario Bava and Dario Argento in particular were what I used to get an idea for the colors. I used snap zooms on the eyes to reference the genre.”
The film’s colors, music, and camerawork he says are all taken directly from Bava and Argento, while the ominous quality of the setting and the props, especially a fireplace, are his own invention.
“I thought if I used lights instead of flame, for the fire, I could make it a little more abstract and add a little more style to the film,” he adds. “The fire ended up becoming like a third character in the film. I think it represents the audience perhaps.”
Tareen cast one of his classmates at SFI for the male lead primarily because, he says, “he looked like a psycho and he had the best knuckles.” As in the Argento films, the character’s hands play a prominent role.
“I want to bring Giallo back into the mainstream. My next thing is a feature length Giallo, because I love it so much. I want to go to everyone and tell them you should go watch this, this and this movie because I think you’ll love it too!”
Semih Tareen behind the camera.
CREW BOX
Writer/Director: Semih Tareen
Director of Photography: Semih Tareen
Editor: Semih Tareen
Composer: Semih Tareen