Dedicated to the work of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger and all the other people, both actors and technicians who helped them make those wonderful films. A lot of the documents have been sent to me or have come from other web sites. The name of the web site is given where known. If I have unintentionally included an image or document that is copyrighted or that I shouldn't have done then please email me and I'll remove it. I make no money from this site, it's purely for the love of the films. [Any comments are by me (Steve Crook) and other members of the email list] |
NFT bfi |
Previews, Interviews & Special Events/A History of Colour
Presenting Technicolor: Dye Transfer Prints from the Collection of the Academy Film Archive |
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This evening's programme will include excerpts from the following 35mm prints: Technicolor for Industrial Films 1952 Original dye transfer print from the Technicolor Reference Collection The Thief of Bagdad Ludwig Berger, Michael Powell, Tim Whelan, 1940 Re-issue dye-transfer print manufactured on safety film stock in 1956 Shane George Stevens, 1953 Dye-transfer print from the George Stevens collection at the Academy Film Archive All That Heaven Allows Douglas Sirk, 1954 Original dye-transfer print from the Academy Film Archive collection Oliver! Carol Reed, 1968 Original dye-transfer print from the Academy Film Archive collection The Godfather Francis Ford Coppola, 1972 Original dye-transfer print from the Academy Film Archive collection Duel in the Sun King Vidor 1946 Dye-transfer print manufactured in 1993 at the Bejing Film Lab Bulworth Warren Beatty, 1998 Original dye-transfer print provided by 20th Century Fox Film Corporation The Thin Red Line Terence Malick, 1998 Original dye-transfer print provided by 20th Century Fox Film Corporation |
Michael Pogorzelski, Director of the Film Archive, presents a history
of the Technicolor dye transfer process that set the standard for motion
picture colour reproduction for over 40 years.
The evening will be introduced by David Pearce, Curator, bfi National Film and Television Archive and curator of the NFT's History of Colour season. There will be opportunities for questions from the audience at the end of the presentation. The Academy of Motion Picture Art and Sciences Film Archive has focused on collecting films and moving picture image material which seek to preserve not only the artistic evolution of cinema but its technical developments as well. The collection contains numerous examples of early and contemporary experiments in both black and white and colour cinematography, sound recording and reproduction, visual effects processes, and unique moving picture formats on various mediums and film gauges. When the Technicolor laboratory closed its doors in Hollywood in 1977 it left behind a vast collection of reels which were known as 'reference prints'. These reels - sometimes making up an entire feature, sometimes only one 1,000-foot reel - were retained by the laboratory as accurate colour references for the production of new dye transfer prints in 35mm and 16mm throughout the pint run or when additional prints were ordered several months or years following initial printing. The Technicolor Reference Collection is now housed at the Academy Film Archive and has proved to be an invaluable resource in countless restoration and preservation efforts. The colour reference reels take out some of the guesswork in re-creating a film's coulor palette as it appears in a dye transfer release print and serves as a guide to preservationists who seek to create an historically accurate colour print on contemporary Eastman-Kodak film stocks. The History of Colour series is unique because so many of the Technicolor features are being presented in original dye transfer release prints. One of the attributes of a dye-transfer Technicolor print is the stability of the colour dyes themselves which do not succumb to fading or alteration as do the dyes in an Eastmancolor print. Cinema enthusiats, svholars, and students who seek to experience a film as audiences did upon its first release can do so if they have access to a print made in the dye transfer process. The original look of the film, its colour palette and attributes are not enhanced, altered, or 'improved' via printing on contemporary film stocks. They remain stable and appear just as they would have to an audience screening the print when the film was first projected. This presentation will offer a brief overview of the technological, corporate, and aesthetic evolution of Technicolor and the dye-transfer printing process by presenting a number of rare dye-transfer Technicolor prints. Michael Pogorzelski |
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