4th International Conference Colour in Film

Although the technical base is just one of many factors contributing to the final form of the film, research on its technical history is one of the important ways to understand the complex picture of national cinema during a certain time period. This presentation will focus on the introduction of Agfacolor film stock in Czechoslovakia under the conditions of nationalized cinematography in the 1940s and 1950s. I will monitor the general conditions of its onset and its gradual expansion, the problems which the domestic film industry faced in connection with the political direction of post-war Czechoslovakia, and last, but not least, the ways the film industry adapted itself to existing conditions and available stock and how did the advent of colour film affected various components of cinema. At the same time, using several specific examples, I will try to explain how such broader historical context can be reflected as far as at the aesthetic level and in the distinctive character of individual films, and to demonstrate the approach to film as a bearer of historical evidence of the time of its inception.