A collection of short restored films supplied by Cineteca di Bologna, one of
Europe’s most important film institutes, provides a unique look on the world
of colours captured at the beginning of the 20th century. The world most of
our contemporaries know only from black-and-white photographs and film
footage suddenly becomes alive, although the colour spectrum is somewhat
imperfect.
Long before the colour film became normal part of life and art, various
inventors and filmmakers had tried to capture colour as authentically as
possible. The films in this digest were shot with the use of Kinemacolor,
a special technology patented in Great Britain that was able to capture red
and green colour tinges. Most of them were “documentary” films, i.e. real-
-life footage as opposed to fiction films made in a studio. That is actually the
reason why they are of immense archival value: they document to us how
people of that period perceived the world (and colours) around them.

Films:

Coiffures et types de Hollande
(France, 1910, 3 min., Pathé)

Rapsodia Satanica / Satan‘s Rhapsody
(Italy, 1915-17, r. / dir. Nino Oxilia, 45 min.)

The Harvest
(United Kingdom, 1908, 6 min.)

Inauguration of the Campanile at Venice / L’inaugurazione del campanile di San Marco
(Italy, 1912, 12 min.)

Plotoni nuotatori della III divisione cavalleria comandata da S.A.R. il conte di Torino
(Italy, 1912, r. / dir. Luca Comerio, 9 min.)

Fording the River
(United Kingdom, 1910, 3 min.)