Think the beginning of cinema was all black and white? Think again. Artists have been colouring films since films were invented. It’s estimated that about 80% of films made between the 1890s and the 1920s were coloured through tinting, toning, stencilling and hand-colouring. This work was done from the mid-1890s by colourists like Elisabeth Thuillier. Thuillier employed 200 women in her Paris workshop, where they worked on a production line and each painted one colour on a film. This process helped bring vibrancy and beauty to fluttering butterfly wings, hypnotic dances and much more.
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In ACMI's collection
On display until
16 February 2031
ACMI: Gallery 1
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The Story of the Moving Image → Moving Pictures → MI-05. Sound and Colour → MI-05-C03