[Commlist] Frames Cinema Journal, Issue 17 ‘The Politics of Colour Media’ published

*/Frames Cinema Journal/*

*The Politics of Colour Media*

*Issue 17, Summer 2020*

*
*

*Guest-Editor: Dr Kirsty Sinclair Dootson*

**

*Co-Editors-in-Chief:*Ana Maria Sapountzi and Peize Li

*Book Review Editor:*Patrick Adamson

Dear colleagues,

It is with great enthusiasm which we announce that Issue 17 of/Frames 
Cinema Journal/‘The Politics of Colour Media’, guest-edited by Dr Kirsty 
Sinclair Dootson, has now been published!

This issue responds to the exciting and rapidly blooming field of 
chromatic scholarship in film, screen, and media studies – specifically, 
the study of colour as a technology, material, and apparatus.

The advents and evolutions of colour technologies across the globe each 
have complex histories that have been shaped by and are telling of their 
specific industrial, social, political, cultural, and ideological 
negotiations. It is the importance of these, and other, intersections 
that drove the creation of this issue. By exploring the power of colour 
beyond its aesthetic realm, we wanted to spotlight how colour 
technologies are revealing of critical forces and hierarchies that have 
been key not only to the development of cinema, film, and other media 
technologies, but to their respective national, international, and 
social histories.

Indeed, philosophical inquiries on the presence, use, and composition of 
colour in film have made significant contributions to the world of 
screen studies, and within the broader discourses of identity, race, 
gender, sexuality etc. However, with this issue we wanted to shift the 
conversation’s attention away from reading colour-as-symbol or 
colour-as-representation and focus on colour-as-apparatus.

We are pleased to announce that this issue is packed with a dazzling 
array of examinations of colour technologies from a variety of 
viewpoints and contexts. Each piece questions, challenges, and revises a 
different example of colour application in film and cinema, thus 
offering fresh and unique contributions to this developing field.

Our*Features*section’s articles explore divergent uses of colour in 
different levels of mid-century filmmaking in Europe.*Sarah 
Street*explores how the medium of film critiqued and satirised the 
phenomenon of advertising in Britain in the 1960s, by examining the 
politicised use of colour in Don Levy’s/Herostratus/(1967) and Peter 
Watkins’/Privilege/(1967).*Elena Gipponi*calls attention to the early 
adoption of colour film in the work of amateur filmmakers in Italy 
during the 1950s and ‘60s, to investigate their role in the country’s 
transition from black-and-white to colour media.

**

Both articles in our*POV*section consider how camera technology 
implicates the materiality, currency, and visual representation of the 
human body, via its capturing and reading of colour.*Lida Zeitlin 
Wu*reflects on her visit to the Color Factory pop-up exhibition in 
Houston, Texas, to offer thought-provoking realisations about the 
digitally mediated infrastructure of such spaces – mainly the 
commodification and quantification of the physical self through 
algorithmic colour. As an international cinematographer,*Yu-Lun 
Sung*provides professional insight on the technical and aesthetic 
decisions contemporary cinematographers make with regards to light when 
working with actors of different skin tones, specifically Asian 
ethnicities, using/Columbus/(Kogonada, 2017),/Crazy Rich Asians/(Chu, 
2018), and/The Farewell/(Wang, 2019) as examples.

Our*Film Featurette*section is abundant with a diversity of work, each 
investigating undermentioned films in screen scholarship.*Lucia 
Szemetova*discusses the political commentary of the drab colour palette 
employed in Nimród Antal’s/Kontroll/(2003), to argue that the film’s 
vision of Hungary recalls aesthetics linked to the country’s Cold War 
past despite its new capitalist present. *Tamara Tasevska*places Claire 
Denis’ use of intensified, fluorescent hues, and digital colour in/High 
Life/(2018) in dialogue with critical, but divergent, approaches to 
colour by Gilles Deleuze and Olafur Eliasson, to argue for the 
philosophical inquiries they prompt.*Louisa Wei*reflects on her 
experience of making the documentary film/Havana Divas/(2018)/,/by 
ruminating on how the chromatic decisions deployed in the film were 
inspired by the Chino-Cubano histories and cultures being investigated.

*Paul Frith*and*Keith M. Johnston’s video essay*for this issue**examines 
the advent of the Eastmancolour in Britain. Through a series of 
interviews with a variety of professionals in the British film industry, 
it discusses the creative and technological agency that chromogenic 
monopack offered British filmmakers and creatives at the time, and more.

Our*Book Review*section features reviews of Ewa Mazierska’s*/Poland 
Daily: Economy, Work, Consumption and Social Class in Polish 
Cinema/*//(2017), Sheila Skaff’s*/Studying Ida/*(2018), Hunter 
Vaughan’s*/Hollywood’s Dirtiest Secret: The Hidden Environmental Costs 
of the Movies/*(2019), Catherine Russell’s*/Archiveology: Walter 
Benjamin and Archival Film Practices/*(2018), Mallory O’Meara’s*/The 
Lady from the Black Lagoon: Hollywood Monsters and the Lost Legacy of 
Milicent Patrick/*(2019), and Sarah Street and Joshua 
Yumibe’s*/Modernity: Color, Cinema, and Media of the 1920s/*(2019), 
along with the edited collections*/Prostitution and Sex Work in Global 
Cinema: New Takes on Fallen Women/*(2017),*/Thai Cinema: The Complete 
Guide/*(2018), and///*The Colour Fantastic: Chromatic Worlds of Silent 
Cinema*/(2018).

With this issue, we are delighted to also be publishing the dossier 
‘*Preserving and Restoring Asian Cinema: The Transnational 
Dimension’,*curated by*Dina Iordanova*. With this 
dossier,*Iordanova*wishes to draw attention to the important restoration 
work being done in Asian film archives – that has, at its essence, a 
transnational scope and reach – as well as highlight the importance of 
Asian archives to academic scholarship on the subject. The dossier 
comprises a preface written by*Iordanova*; articles by*Sanchai 
Chotirosseranee*, Director of the Film Archive (Public Organization), 
Thailand, and*Karen Chan*, Executive Director of the Asian Film Archive 
(AFA), Singapore; and interviews with*Bede Cheng, Managing Director at 
L’Immagine Ritrovata Asia*by*Andrea Gelardi*, and*Nick Deocampo*, 
Associate Professor at the Film Institute, University of the 
Philippines, by*Anushrut Ramakrishnan Agrwaal*.

*ISSUE 17: THE POLITICS OF COLOUR MEDIA*

*TABLE OF CONTENTS*

*EDITORIAL*

Letter from the Editors

*INTRODUCTION TO THE ISSUE*

*The Politics of Colour*

By Kirsty Sinclair Dootson

**

*FEATURE ARTICLES*

*Colour and the Critique of Advertising:**/Privilege/**(Peter Watkins, 
1967) and**/Herostratus/**(Don Levy, 1967)*

By Sarah Street

*Small-Gauge Colour Visions: The Role of Amateur Filmmakers in Italy’s 
Transition from Black-and-White to Colour*

By Elena Gipponi

*POV*

*Fabricating Images at the Color Factory*

By Lida Zeitlin Wu

*Reading the Light Right: The Exposure of Asian Skin Tones in 
Cinematography*

By Yu-Lun Sung

**

*FILM FEATURETTES*

*The Politics of Post-Socialist Colour in Nimród 
Antal’s**/Kontroll/**(2003)*

By Lucia Szemetova

*The Colour of the Possible: Olafur Eliasson, and Gilles Deleuze’s 
‘Colour-Image’ in Claire Denis’**/High Life/*

By Tamara Tasevska

*The Memory of Colour:/Havana Divas/, Cantonese Opera*

By S. Louisa Wei

*VIDEO ESSAYS*

*Talking Colour: Remembering the Eastmancolor Revolution*

By Paul Frith and Keith M. Johnston

**

*BOOK REVIEWS*

*/Poland Daily: Economy, Work, Consumption and Social Class in Polish 
Cinema/**(2017) By Ewa Mazierska*

Reviewed by Eliza Rose

*/Studying Ida/**(2018) by Sheila Skaff*

Reviewed by Lucia Szemetova

*/Hollywood’s Dirtiest Secret: The Hidden Environmental Costs of the 
Movies/**(2019) By Hunter Vaughan*

Reviewed by Cassice Last

*//*

*/Archiveology: Walter Benjamin and Archival Film Practices/**(2018) By 
Catherine Russell*

Reviewed by Marie-Pierre Burquier

*//*

*/The Lady from the Black Lagoon: Hollywood Monsters and the Lost Legacy 
of Milicent Patrick/**(2019) By Mallory O’Meara*

Reviewed by Ana Maria Sapountzi

*//*

*/The Colour Fantastic: Chromatic Worlds of Silent Cinema/**(2018) 
Edited by Giovanna Fossati, Victoria Jackson, Bregt Lameris, Elif 
Rongen-Kaynakci /**/Chromatic Modernity: Color, Cinema, and Media of the 
1920s/**(2019) By Joshua Yumibe and Sarah Street*

Reviewed by Patrick Adamson

*/Prostitution and Sex Work in Global Cinema: New Takes on Fallen 
Women/**(2017) Edited by Danielle Hipkins and Kate Taylor-Jones*

Reviewed by Dina Iordanova

*/Thai Cinema: The Complete Guide/**(World Cinema)**//**(2018) Edited by 
Mary J. Ainslie and Katarzyna Ancuta*

Reviewed by Forrest Pando

*DOSSIER: PRESERVING AND RESTORING ASIAN CINEMA – THE TRANSNATIONAL 
DIMENSION*

*Archiving and Film Restoration: The View From Asia*

By Dina Iordanova

*Rediscovery and Restoration of a ‘Lost’ Thai Classic:**/Santi-Vina/*

By Sanchai Chotirosseranee

*Mouldy Magenta – Celluloid to Digital: Giving a Second Life to Films*

By Karen Chan

*Keeping Cinema’s Memory Alive in Hong Kong: An Interview with Bede 
Cheng, Managing Director at L’Immagine Ritrovata Asia*

By Andrea Gelardi

*A Life in the Archives: An interview with Professor Nick Deocampo*

By Anushrut Ramakrishnan Agrwaal


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