This seminar is convened by the BAFTSS Colour and Film SIG in cooperation with the Colour Collective UK. All welcome!

Registration (free):  https://forms.cloud.microsoft/r/H49pHhiHZK

Programme

1:45pm – 2:00pm presenters meet online for technical checks (screen share etc)

2:00pm – 2:05pm Welcome and introduction: Liz Watkins and Louisa Rogers.

Session 1:

Chaired by tbc

2:05 – 2:20 Sarah Street. ‘Marilyn Monroe, star of colour and widescreen technologies.’

2:20 – 2:35 Jade Evans. ‘Beyond The Red Shoes: Colour and Iconography in Moira Shearer’s Enduring Star Image.’

2:35 – 2:50 Liz Watkins. ‘Bell, Book and Candle, Eliot Elisofon’s colour charts and the craft of Kim Novak.’

2:50 – 3:15 Q&A

3:15 – 3:25 Break

Session 2:

Chaired by Louisa Rogers

3:25 – 3:40 Nicolò Salmaso. ‘“The War of the English Roses” Chromatic Stardom and Cosmetics Advertising in Late 1970s Japan.’

3:40 – 3:55 Casci Ritchie. ‘Prince’s Purple: From Purple Rain (1984) to Posthumous Fan Dress.’

3:55 – 4:15 Q&A

4:15 End 

Abstracts & Bio notes.

Session 1:

Sarah Street. Marilyn Monroe, star of colour and widescreen technologies. Thirteen of the thirty-two feature films in which Marilyn Monroe acted in between 1946 and 1962 are in colour. Monroe’s ascendancy as a star coincided with major changes in cinema technology as shooting films with three-strip Technicolor cameras was replaced by cheaper stocks such as those based on Eastmancolor. The second major development was widescreen processes including CinemaScope which created panoramic, rectangular images. These impacted a film’s spatial design, editing, cinematography, as well as how stars were shot. We can trace these developments through Monroe’s major films, from Niagara and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, which used the standard Academy Ratio and three-strip Technicolor, and her CinemaScope, Eastmancolor films from How to Marry a Millionaire to Bus Stop, and her last colour film Let’s Make Love. The Prince and the Showgirl (1957), filmed in the UK, was not shot in CinemaScope. As well as the impact of different aspect ratios, the presentation will discuss the role of Leonard Doss, colour consultant on most of her colour films except The Prince and the Showgirl, and Let’s Make Love which featured the work of George Hoynigen-Huene.

Sarah Street is Professor of Film at the University of Bristol, UK. Her publications on colour film include Colour Films in Britain: The Negotiation of Innovation 1900-55 (BFI 2012), three co-edited collections: Color and the Moving Image: History, Theory, Aesthetics (2012) and British Colour Cinema: Practices and Theories (BFI, 2013) both with Simon Brown and Liz Watkins), and The Color Fantastic: Chromatic Worlds of Silent Cinema  (with Giovanna Fossati, Victoria Jackson, Bregt Lameris, Elif Rongen-Kaynacki and Joshua Yumibe).

Jade Evans. Beyond The Red Shoes: The Significance of Colour in Moira Shearer’s Enduring Stardom.The Red Shoes transformed Moira Shearer from a ballet star into a film star. A remarkable dancer, her enduring star legacy was that of the red-headed girl who wore the red shoes in Powell and Pressburger’s critically acclaimed film. This presentation examines the role of colour in constructing Shearer’s star image for The Red Shoes, referring to materials held in the BFI National Archive from artists Hein Heckroth and Ivor Beddoes, as well as directors Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, to determine some of the methods utilised to construct her hyperfeminine, fantasy image for the film. This talk also explores how Shearer’s role in The Red Shoes persisted in her star legacy, drawing on her films including The Man Who Loved Redheads and The Story of Three Loves.

Jade Evans recently completed an AHRC REACH funded PhD at Queen Mary University of London and the BFI National Archive. She researched, through examination of archival materials, the methods utilised to create and promote British women film stars between 1920 – 1970 including Jessie Matthews, Valerie Hobson, Moira Shearer and Julie Christie. Jade has written and presented work on a range of subjects from film stardom to queer cinema, and she is also a co-convenor of the BAFTSS LGBTQIA+ special interest group.

Liz Watkins. Bell, Book and Candle, Eliot Elisofon’s colour charts and the craft of Kim Novak. This presentation explores the work of Eliot Elisofon as photojournalist for Life magazine and Special Color Consultant for the widescreen Technicolor film production of Bell, Book and Candle (Quine, 1958), in which Kim Novak co-starred with James Stewart following Vertigo (Hitchcock, 1958). Elisofon’s designs, which can be deciphered from a series of 35mm colour slides, shot scripts and production correspondence, focussed on the use of chromatic light (filters, coloured gels) to delineate social spaces, infer moral values and to underscore the expression of emotion throughout the film. Elisofon’s ‘color chart’ was mediated by Quine as director and the cinematographer James Wong Howe. The visual references to Vertigo (the obfuscatory effects of fog filters and the pool of green light that encompasses the actress as Madeleine/Judy) recur in Novak’s portrayal of concealed identity (Gil as witch/mortal) in Quine’s film. The figure of the double has been read across Vertigo and Bell, Book and Candle as a single text to contest authorship as an intersection of star and auteur interests (Barnett 2007; Hantke 2015). This study of Elisofon’s ‘color chart’ refers to his work on Moulin Rouge (Huston, 1952), but primarily examines the role of colour in the concept of the double, which as a ‘counterpoint’ in a discourse on social class, artifice, emotion and desire in a specifically filmic enunciation of the star image. 

Liz Watkins’ research explores the history of film colours, the body, its representations and the ethics and politics of digital mediations of photography and film archives. She has worked as a Lecturer in Film and the History of Art in the UK and New Zealand. She has held research fellowships at the National Maritime Museum Greenwich, Harry Ransom Research Center, University of Texas at Austin, the University of Bristol, University of Leeds and the University of Oxford. Her publications include articles in Screen, photographies and Journal for Cultural Research and she is co-editor of Color and the Moving Image (2012), British Colour Cinema, Practices and Theories (2013) and Gesture and Film (2017), Colourised Histories (2025) and the forthcoming Polar Photography and Film: Exploring the Archive.

Session 2:

Nicolo Salmaso, Independent Scholar. “The War of the English Roses” Chromatic Stardom and Cosmetics Advertising in Late 1970s Japan’ This talk examines how cosmetics, color, and star imagery intersect in two late‑1970s Japanese advertising campaigns that placed European actresses at the center of a highly publicized “War of the English Roses.” In 1978, producer Mataichiro Yamamoto announced Jacques Demy’s live‑action adaptation of Riyoko Ikeda’s shōjo manga The Rose of Versailles (1972-1973), set before and during the French Revolution, with Catriona MacColl cast as the androgynous Commander of the Royal Guard Oscar François de Jarjayes. Shiseido, a major sponsor of the film, simultaneously revealed that MacColl would front its 1979 spring campaign, built around the striking chromatic identity of its Bénéfique Gracie red lipstick. In response, Kanebo Cosmetics enlisted Olivia Hussey, internationally recognized for Franco Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet (1968), for its own spring campaign promoting its “London Tokyo” line, whose lipsticks and eyeshadows offered a contrasting palette of soft yet cosmopolitan hues. Through close analysis of these campaigns, I explore how Shiseido and Kanebo mobilized cosmetic textures, color design, and the actresses’ iconic film roles to construct contrasting star images: MacColl as a glamorous promising star, and Hussey as an established romantic heroine. Drawing on contemporary sources, stardom and celebrity studies, gender studies, color theory, and the dynamics of Japanese advertising, I demonstrate how MacColl and Hussey used these campaigns to negotiate transnational stardom while offering resonant narratives within Japanese mainstream culture.

Nicolò Salmaso, Independent Scholar. Assistant Editor, Reviews. Gender/ Sexuality/ Italy.

Casci Ritchie. Prince’s Purple: From Purple Rain (1984) to Posthumous Fan Dress. Prince is forever affiliated with purple. Known as ‘The Purple One’ or ‘Purple Yoda’ among his many names, no other star-performer is so singularly identified with one colour. This paper traces purple’s journey from screen to fan-body, examining the costumes and visuals of Purple Rain (1984) and the colour’s posthumous afterlife. Drawing on archival research with the screen-worn Purple Rain trench coat, alongside interviews with costume designers Vaughn Terry and Marie France, I consider how the garment’s materiality allowed purple to shift from icon to symbol, detaching from film costume to become shorthand for Prince across four decades of performance. Interviews with fans since Prince’s death in 2016 offer further insight into what I term the ’embodied intimacy’ (Ritchie, 2025) of posthumous fan dress, tracing how purple continues to be worn, aged into, and maintained as an act of tribute. In studying Prince’s purple, I explore a case study that shifts across several decades, moving from broad cultural recognition to a nuanced, embodied fan practice that endures beyond the star-performer’s own lifetime.

Casci Ritchie is a fashion and cultural historian, writer, and educator. She was recently awarded her doctorate for her thesis titled “(Un)dressing the Love Symbol: The Life, Death, and Legacy of Prince’s Wardrobe,” which explores the cultural influences, materiality, labour processes, afterlives, and affective legacies of the musician. She has published her research widely in journals including Critical Studies in Men’s Fashion and Queer Studies in Popular Culture. Her book, On His Royal Badness: The Life and Legacy of Prince’s Fashion, was first published in 2021. A new edition, featuring an additional chapter and published by Sarabande, has recently been released in North America, with the UK edition following on 3rd September 2026.

Image: Shisheido and Bénéfique cosmetics campaign ‘War of the English Roses’ in Japan 1978.