This is one of the most successful and interesting of the surviving Kinemacolor films. Intriguingly detailed and artfully composed, the film is also notable for its display of human skin tones. Although one may be wary of racial labelling that could denigrate its subjects, the accurate reproduction of skin colour was considered to be the ultimate test of a colour system, photographic or cinematographic. If you could get the faces right, then the rest of the film would convince, and Kinemacolor’s faces always convince. The presence of European tourists at this location on the present day border between Egypt and Sudan only adds to the richness of a piquant piece of documentary observation.

Luke McKernan

Having resolved the problem of animated photography, Louis Lumière moved on to resolve the next problem of photography, colour. In 1903 he invented the autochrome, a three-colour additive system. Produced from 1907 onward on an industrial scale, the Autochrome, a glass plate diapositive with beautiful hues, was the only successful colour photography system until Kodak brought out the Kodachrome 1936 and Agfa, at the same time, the improved Agfacolor.

Of the many experimental colour film processes, only George Albert Smith’s Kinemacolor, a bi-colour additive system, was fairly successful. A black-and-white film was exposed and projected through alternating red and green filters: projection speed was 32 frames per second. Gaumont’s Chronochrome, presented for the first time on November 15, 1912, consists of a three-lens camera and corresponding projector. This three-colour additive process produces wonderful colours, but the very costly and complicated technique limited its commercial success.

The normal way to colour films in the early 1910s would be a combined use of tinting, toning and stencil-colouring on positive black-and-white prints, resulting in rich polychrome images.
All examples presented are of course modern reproductions on color film stock.

Mariann Lewinsky