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Colour in Film

Laurie Taylor talks to Swarnavel Eswaran and Kirsty Sinclair Dootson about colour film in Indian cinema and the politics behind the availability of the technology.

How did the arrival of colour and film technology transform cinema and its cultural politics? Laurie Taylor explores the intertwined histories of technology, aesthetics, and identity.

Swarnavel Eswaran, filmmaker and scholar at Michigan State University, introduces us to the remarkable story of Kodak Krishnan 鈥 Eastman Kodak鈥檚 鈥渕an from the East.鈥 Krishnan played a pivotal role in bringing American film technology to India during the mid-20th century, a period when cinema was becoming a powerful medium for shaping ideas of modernity and national pride.

Kirsty Sinclair Dootson, Associate Professor in the History of Art department at University College London, is one of the organisers of the Bombay Colour Research Network. Her book The Rainbow鈥檚 Gravity asked how new colour media transformed the way Britain saw itself and its empire between 1856 and 1968. Her research also examines how colour technologies 鈥 from early tinting processes to the vibrant palettes of Bollywood musicals became part of debates over race, class, and cultural representation.
Kirsty Sinclair Dootson is one of the academics who has been a New Generation Thinker, on the scheme run by the 麻豆社 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to share research on radio.

Producer: Natalia Fernandez

Release date:

27 minutes

On radio

Today 15:30

Guests and Further Reading

Guests:

-听

Kirsty鈥檚 book, - Yale University Press London


听-听


OTHER LINKS


Broadcasts

  • Today 15:30
  • Sunday 06:05

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麻豆社 Thinking Allowed is produced in partnership with The Open University

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