5th International Conference Colour in Film

The time frame between the 1890s and the mid-1930s is a period marked by intense and rapidly changing technical and aesthetic developments in color film, wherein ‘miraculous’ scientific inventions are interrelated with artistic expressions. This formation is also mirrored in the almost simultaneous gradual rise of art and costume departments in general and production design in particular, in which color played a key role as well.

Based on David Bordwell’s historical poetics and Monika Wagner’s material iconography, this presentation will therefore concentrate on the processes of poetic film making, with particular emphasis on its conceptualization in pre-production and its material realization during production. Thus, in discussing several artistic practices and scientific strategies for designing color film, theories of aesthetic productivity will be interwoven with the development of manifold film materials during the time frame at hand. The iconography of the alchemist will thereby serve as a conceptual metaphor for the interrelated fields of the arts and science, as well as for the formative aspects of creation, material transformation, and color.

Color Mania – Curating the Materiality of Color in Photography and Film in the Museum Context
Or: How to bring Historical Film and Photography Color Processes into an Art and Science Exhibition
From September to November 2019, Fotomuseum Winterthur presented the exhibition Color Mania – The Material of Color in Photography and Film. The show was a collaboration between the museum, one of the leading institutions for the presentation and discussion of photography and visual culture, and the innovative and extensive FilmColors research projects (ERC Advanced Grant FilmColors: Bridging the Gap between Technology and Aesthetics and SNSF FilmColors: Technologies, Cultures, Institutions) led by Barbara Flueckiger at the University of Zurich. Combining historical exhibits – items related to the history of color film and color photography – with contemporary artworks, Color Mania offered an experience that allowed for multiple entry points and different readings (and directions of reading) that intersected and combined within the exhibition space. It was conceived as a show that joined both art and science.
This presentation will provide an insight into the Color Mania exhibition project, its background(s), concept and challenges. From the standpoint of the curator (or better: the scholar-preservationist-curator), I will discuss questions related to presenting film colors in the exhibition space and bringing film historical and film technical academic research as well as aspects of preservation, restoration and digitization in form of a museum show to the general public. Moreover, my presentation will also introduce the book Color Mania, which was published on the occasion of the exhibition and which deepens and broadens selected elements and themes of the on-site show.

VeCoScan (VErsatile COlor film SCANner) is an ERC Proof of Concept project conducted at the department of Film Studies of the University of Zurich. The scope was to develop and test a multi-spectral and versatile film scanner prototype that is able to capture a wide range of historical film colors. The scanner allows screening the colors of film prints via digital projection without further adjustments by color grading. This constitutes a scientifically proven workflow, which is in line with restoration ethical guidelines. The versatility of the scanner also allows extracting the color information of negatives and faded film in the most efficient way, thus improving the result of digital restoration. The multispectral image acquisition is combined with a modular structure which offers a flexible geometrical arrangement of the illumination, owing to the way film is illuminated in analog projection. The working prototype was tested with a variety of historical color film processes and the results were evaluated in parallel analog/digital projection by a group of experts in the field (film scholars and archivists, colorists and scientists). We are happy to share the results of the project at CiF 2020.

When thinking about color films in the period of the 1940s one can’t help but also think about the concept of genre. Feature film productions in color during that particular decade can almost exclusively be categorized as pertaining to one of a limited number of genres, first and foremost within Classical Hollywood cinema’s studio system, but also in other national film production contexts.

While most investigations of genre focus on narrative textual analysis or iconographic visual patterns, this talk will aim at a broader investigation of patterns of the mise-en-scene within different genre films and how they relate to the use of color. Working from an extensive corpus of analyzed film, various film examples are used to highlight the commonalities and differences of a number of genre productions, embedding them in their respective production context, and investigating the use of color and its intra- and intertextual functions. In the vein of David Bordwell’s historical poetics and Barbara Flueckiger’s technobole approach to film history, the diverse and intertwining factors influencing color film aesthetic and style – color film technology, production personnel, industry politics, normative ideas – are carved out and reflected to form a differentiated understanding of the role of color film technology and style within genre productions.