Announcements/CFPs

Current events, calls and announcements for work on colour, film, tv, screen studies and cultures by and beyond the BAFTSS Colour and Film SIG.


BAFTSS SIGS Newsletter June 2023 Issue 8: The BAFTSS SIGS are a network of 24 research groups, each of which focuses on a specific subject area. The network includes Special Interest Groups on Transnational Screens, Animation, Science Fiction and Fantasy, Amateur Cinema, British Cinema and Television, German Screen Studies, and a new Media and the Environment SIG. See the BAFTSS SIGS webpages. Read more


BAFTSS Colour and Film Research Online Seminar Series 2023 These seminars have been organised by the British Association of Film, Television and Screen Studies’ Special Interest Group on Colour and Film. Each of the seminars offer a series of perspectives on new research in colour, film, television and the archive. The Spring- Summer 2023 seminar series culminates in a book launch for two new major publications on colour: Professor Charlotte Ribeyrol’s William Burges’s Great Book Case and the Victorian Colour Revolution (Yale University Press, 2023) and Dr Kirsty Sinclair Dootson’s The Rainbow’s Gravity: Colour, Materiality and British Modernity (Paul Mellon Centre, 2023).

Colour and Film Research Seminar 16:00-17:30 (BST) online Thursday 15th June 2023: This seminar brings together five researchers who are working on different aspects of colour, film, television and the archive. The short-form presentations will be followed by a Q&A in a format that aims to facilitate informed and friendly discussion.

Speakers: 

Chair: Professor Sarah Street, University of Bristol.

Jan Faull, Royal Geographical Society/ Royal Holloway University: ‘Reassessing John Noel’s role in photographs and film of the Everest expedition “beyond the affair of the dancing lamas”’ 

Cathy Lomax, Queen Mary University of London: ‘”Blue is a problem”: coloured eyeshadow in films of the 1950s and 1960s

Vicky Jackson, University of Bristol: ‘Coronation Street, Colour and World Building’

Liz Watkins, University of Leeds: ‘Eliot Elisofon’s ‘color control’ in photojournalism and Technicolor Design.’

Kirsten Moana Thompson, Seattle University. “The Doors of Perception: Hallucinatory Animation, Disney and Color”

Register Here. All welcome! A link to the MS Teams meeting will be circulated to all registered attendees 24 hours prior to the event.

Top left: Exploring Elisofon’s influence as Special Color Consultant for Moulin Rouge (John Huston, 1952) and Bell, Book and Candle (Richard Quine, 1958). Top right: Jan Faull’s presentation on Captain John Noel and colour pictures, through Tibet to Everest. Lower left: Hilda’s Mural. Coronation Street. Episode 1617, 14 July 1976. Directed by Bill Gilmour. Granada Television. Middle right: Collage by Cathy Lomax for ‘”Blue is a problem”: coloured eyeshadow in films of the 1950s and 1960s.’ Lower right: for Kirsten Moana Thompson’s research on “”The Doors of Perception: Hallucinatory Animation, Disney and Color”.


BAFTSS Colour and Film Research Online Seminar Series: Book launch 16:00-17:30 (BST) Thursday 22nd June 2023.

The British Association of Film, Television and Screen Studies Colour and Film SIG is delighted to host an online book launch for two new publications on colour: Professor Charlotte Ribeyrol’s William Burges’s Great Book Case and the Victorian Colour Revolution (Yale University Press, 2023) and Dr Kirsty Sinclair Dootson’s The Rainbow’s Gravity: Colour, Materiality and British Modernity (Paul Mellon Centre. 2023). The authors will speak about their new publications with discussants Professor Sarah Street (University of Bristol), Professor Joshua Yumibe (Michigan State University) and Dr Liz Watkins (University of Leeds).

Register Here All welcome! A link to the online book launch – via MS Teams – will be circulated to attendees before the event.

For further information please contact: e.i.watkins@leeds.ac.uk and vicky.jackson@bristol.ac.uk

Left: and Dr Kirsty Sinclair Dootson’s The Rainbow’s Gravity: Colour, Materiality and British Modernity (Paul Mellon Centre, 2023)

Right: Professor Charlotte Ribeyrol’s William Burges’s Great Book Case and the Victorian Colour Revolution (Yale University Press, 2023)


Thanks to the speakers who took part and everyone who attended the first of the BAFTSS Colour and Film Research Seminars of 2023 .

The seminar series will offer a series of snapshots, each focusing on aspects of new research in colour and film. The second of the three online seminars (15th June 2023) will foreground four short-form presentations. Each presentation is 10 minutes long and will be followed by a Q&A. Together the researchers bring together an exciting combination of interests in colour, film and the archive in a format that aims to facilitate informed and friendly discussion.

The programme for the first seminar (9th March 2023) is copied below. Details of the second Colour and Film Research Seminar will follow soon and we hope that you will join us 16:00- 17:30 on Thursday 15th June 2023!

Colour and Film Research Seminar 1. 16:00-17:30 (BST) Thursday 9th March 2023

Session chair: Dr Liz Watkins, University of Leeds.

Zoe Viney Burgess, PGR. University of Southampton ‘Colour Stories from the Archive. 9.5mm film.

Professor Sarah Street, University of Bristol. ‘British Film Criticism and Global Colour’ based on her chapter from the forthcoming book Global color cinema: the Monopack revolution at Mid-century, eds. Sarah Street and Joshua Yumibe (Rutgers University Press, 2023)

Professor Jeffrey Geiger, University of Essex. ‘Dislocating the Travelogue: Adelaide Pearson and Amateur Colour Expression’

Dr Kristian Moen, University of Bristol. ‘Colour, Disney and Animation’

Followed by Q&A.

For further information contact: Liz Watkins e.i.watkins@leeds.ac.uk

The event has been organised by the British Association of Film, Television and Screen Studies Special Interest Group on Colour and Film. The SIG Convenors are Professor Sarah Street (Bristol), Dr Liz Watkins (Leeds), Dr Vicky Jackson (Bristol).


BAFTSS SIGS Newsletter issue7 (October 2022) is now online. The BAFTSS SIGS form a network of 23 research groups, which cover subject areas including Stardom and Performance Studies, Transnational Film and Television, Archives and Archival Methods, Essay Films, East Asian Screen Cultures and as from this month, a new Adaptations SIG.

This BAFTSS SIGS Newsletter includes links to funding opportunities, CFPs, Reading Groups (online), the LGBTQIA + Screen Studies SIG’s new Richard Dyer Student Essay Writing Prize, the Colour Across Chinese Cinemas: Pan Si Dong Screening which is sponsored by the Colour and Film SIG, a 9.5mm Film resource, which has emerged from ’The Little Apparatus’ 100 years of 9.5mm Film Conference convened by the brilliant Zoë Viney Burgess at the University of Southampton (online), and the programme for the Philosophical Thinking and the Films of Kelly Reichardt Symposium, which will be held at Queen Mary University of London (5th November 2022). 


Invitation: the BAFTSS Colour and Film SIG welcomes new submissions from guest contributors and BAFTSS members for the Notes on Colour blog.

Contact: SIG convenors vicky.jackson@bristol.ac.uk and/or e.i.watkins@leeds.ac.uk

We welcome blogs (500- 2000 words) on recent research in colour, film, TV and screen media, archival methodologies, conference reports, exhibition/ film/ book reviews and more.


BAFTSS Colour and Film SIG on Twitter follow us @BAFTSSColorFilm


BAFTSS Special Interest Groups Newsletter issue 5 (November 2021) is now online. The SIGs are the British Association of Film, Television and Screen Studies (BAFTSS) network of twenty research groups. Details of SIG activities, CFPs, and funding opportunities can be found in the newsletter.

For further information or to join BAFTSS or get in touch