Daily Schedule

Sunday, December 10, 2013, 18.30h– Pre-Screening
THE LIFE AQUATIC WITH STEVE ZISSOU (US 2004)

Monday, December 11, 2013 – 9:30 am – Morning Session

9.30-9.40
Introduction
Elza Tantcheva, Ulrich Ruedel, Nikolaus Wostry
Opening Screening: A CALL FOR PRESERVATION
Florian Wrobel, Oliver Bruck (introduction)

9.40-10.25
Keynote 1: Diving – Immersing – Floating
The Aesthetics of Cinematic Undersea Worlds
Prof. Dr. Franziska Heller

10.25-10 :55
UNDERWATER FAIRY TALES :
LE ROYAUME DES FEES (FR 1903)
LE PÊCHEUR DE PERLES (FR 1907)
Elif Rongen-Kaynakçi

10:55-11:15
Coffee Break

11.15-11.35
100 YEARS OF 16MM
Ulrich Ruedel
WUNDERWELT DER MEERESTIEFE (DE c.1940)
AUTOUR D’UN RÉCIF (FR 1949)

11.35-12.35
Keynote 2: Color on the Big Screen: Interferential Color Photography and Projection circa 1900
Dr. Hanin Hannouch
Long before the projection of color film, using an optical lantern to illuminate and magnify hand-colored photographic glass slides both enthralled amateur audiences and fueled the doubts of skeptics. One such skeptic was scientist Sir David Brewster (1781-1868) who considered the mediocre quality of painted lantern slides as the chief culprit for the reticence towards projection in the early nineteenth century. But Brewster did not live long enough to experience the shift in the stance of European audiences which interferential color photography would instigate in the late nineteenth century. In 1891, French physicist Gabriel Lippmann (1845-1921) presented a color photograph of the spectrum of light at the Academy of Science in Paris. In order to be able to render all the necessary wavelength to prove the undulatory nature, he coated his glass plate with a photographic emulsion based on silver halides in albumen, which is still, until today, considered of the highest possible resolution in photographic history. Thanks to the sharpness of its image, its vivid hues, its robust materiality, but also its technical limitations, the “Lippmann plate” became a megascopic projector’s best friend. This talk historicizes the projection of inferential plates circa 1900, mostly in the German-speaking world, studying the double feedback loop between, on the one hand, these unique color photographs which could neither be printed nor copied, and on the other hand, the optical lantern which they depended on to reach a broad public. I argue that this feedback loop is a co-production between image and instrument: The projector enabled the sensual experience of dazzling colors; as witnessed on a big screen in amateur circles and it communicated the science behind color photography in academic societies, while the “Lippmann plate” pushed its instrument beyond its former frivolous ties to the laterna magica, turning it into an instrument of physics, and offering it an accurate, high-quality, and mechanical color rendition, unmatched by any other technology at the time. 

12.35-13.45 Lunch break

Monday, December 11, 2013 – Afternoon Session

13.45-14.05
PIRSCH UNTER WASSER (DE 1942)
Sissi Böhler (introduction)

14.05-15.10
AMAZING TALES FROM THE DESMET ARCHIVES
Elif Rongen-Kaynakçi
The Desmet Collection of films and ephemera deposited in 1957 at the Eye Filmmuseum has been inscribed in UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register in 2011 for its significance to world culture. Jean Desmet was a cinema owner and film distributor, active till 1916. His collection of nine hundred-plus films, many in colour, and its tens of thousands of documents (posters, programs, piano tuner receipts, insurance papers) contains many unique items and has upended previously held notions about the first decades of cinema’s silent era. Elif Rongen-Kaynakçi, curator of silent film at EYE Filmmuseum, takes a dive into the archive interlacing Desmet’s personal life and career with the developments of the global film industry.

15.10-15.30 Coffee Break

15.30-16.35
The Colors of Desmet

16.35-17.10
THE UFACOLOR AQUARIUM
Sreya Chatterjee, Ulrich Ruedel
BUNTE FISCHWELT (DE 1936)
VOM HAUSWIRT UND MIETER AUF DEM MEERESGRUND (DE 1938)
The unusual series of aquarium films shot using the subtractive two-colour Ufacolor process through the 1930s contribute significantly to mapping of the trajectory of underwater film colours. Preceding the subtractive three-colour Agfacolor negative-positive process, Ufacolor was used for numerous short-length culture and advertisement films in Germany and even for a feature-length film in India, and is of significant interest as a European equivalent to the American Multicolor and Cinecolor systems. Diving deeper into the filmography of this colour separation and metal-dye toning based process, it emerged that Universum Film AG, also known as Ufa, produced a number of aquarium films on the Ufacolor process. These were primarily directed by Ulrich K. T. Schulz, a zoologist and pioneer of biological culture film. His strived to technologically further underwater filmmaking and made about 400 films between 1920 and 1962. His first film on the subject of aquatic life, INSEKTEN, DIE „INS WASSER GINGEN”, was shot as early as 1921. Our research is not only a chemical-material investigation into the employment of a subtractive two-colour process in simulating the vast colourful world of underwater flora and fauna in the measured span of aquariums – a “medium” that preceded underwater film and photography, but also a call for the preservation of these films and furthering research on the fascinating filmography of the lesser-known underwater film pioneer Ulrich K. T. Schulz.

17.10-17.4o Polavision – an experiment in instant colour film
Martin Reinhart, Stefanie Zingl
As a specialist in early colour processes, Stefanie Zingl of the Austrian Film Museum has been working on documents in the collection of the Eumig Museum relating to the short-lived Polavision process that had previously received little attention. In a presentation together with the history of technology historian Martin Reinhart, the development and function of the instant colour film process is presented and the amateur movie devices developed by Eumig in cooperation with Polaroid are shown and demonstrated.
Martin Reinhart is a trained artist, film technician, filmmaker and film historian. He was curator for film and photography at the Technische Museum Wien and managed the WestLich Photographica Auction and the WestLicht Photo Museum in Vienna. He rediscovered the lost German-language sound film version of Sergej Eisenstein’s “Battleship Potemkin” and, together with Thomas Tode, initiated the reconstruction of this 1930 version. In the context of this reconstruction the two published a book about the Vienna-born silent film composer Edmund Meisel in 2015. In the same year, their documentary “Dreams Rewired”, made together with Manu Luksch, had its premiere. Martin is also the inventor of tx-transform – an experimental film technique that allows to swap time and space in film. Together with his company Indiecam GmbH, he pioneered digital film making in the early 2000s. Together with Adobe they developed the CinemaDNG format, which still is the leading industry standard. Among others their cameras were used by filmmakers like Ron Howard and Danny Boyle. Currently Martin works as a senior lecturer for the Art & Science department at the University of Applied Arts, Vienna.
Stefanie Zingl is the custodian of the amateur film collection at the Austrian Film Museum and the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Digital History. She studied theater, film and media studies as well as art history at the University of Vienna and at the Universidad de La Habana in Cuba. Stefanie Zingl was a research associate for the project “I-Media-Cities” (2016-2019, EU Horizon 2020) and is currently the co-project leader of the amateur film project “Reel Adventures” (2023-2025, Vienna Business Agency). 

Monday, December 11, 2023, 19.30h – Evening Screening
Introduction to the Shark Project, followed by
EXPLORING HANS HASS (AU 2019)
Oliver Bruck

Tuesday, December 12, 2013 – Morning Session

9.30-9.50h
LICHTER UNTER WASSER (AU 1952)
Sabine Riedl (introduction)

9.50-10.20h
[Memories of Lotte and Hans Hass]
Bernd Lötsch

10.20-10.50h
Archival Traces of UNDER THE CARIBBEAN’s Underwater Colours (Hans Hass, 1954)
Rita Clemens
Hans Hass‘ most famous film, UNTERNEHMEN XARIFA / UNDER THE CARRIBEAN (1954, LI, AT, DE), prevents a fascinating case study. The film was one of the first underwater colour film worldwide and was promoted as the first German (speaking) Technicolor film. As such, it raises interesting questions about its colour technology, combining 35mm chromogenic negative and 16mm Kodachrome processes with Technicolor IB printing in a fascinating mélange of colour processes to share the underwater world of colour with cinema audiences for what was essentially the first time. Ongoing research into the vast amount of Hass film material held by the Filmarchiv Austria has already uncovered an unknown Hass film, but due to the extent of the collections, has not yet revealed any of the original Kodachrome footage of this film. However, based on archival documents, it was possible to confirm and reconstruct the colour film workflow. This research will be shared, along with a discussion of the restoration opportunities that a potential future discovery of the source material may present.

10.50-11.10 Coffee Break

11.10-12.10
Multispectral Scanning with the Scan2Screen Workflow
Lutz Garmsen
The multispectral scanning and postprocessing workflow Scan2Screen is the result of more than a decade of research on historical film colors and digitization practices.
So far these practices were governed by rigid hardware options on the side of the scanners. The most crucial part of present limitations lies in the lighting which is usually confined to three or four spectral bands. In contrast Scan2Screen provides a completely versatile design with multispectral illumination consisting of 6 bands plus an infrared light, thus covers the full visible spectrum. Moreover it is the first scanner that includes a collimated optical set-up thus matching the directed light illumination in cinema projectors create significantly different color renditions on the screen, known as the chromatic Callier effect (Trumpy / Flueckiger 2019). Based on the multispectral scans the Scan2Screen software renders the final result based on illumination models provided by measurements of historical cinema projectors. Thus it eliminates the subjective interpretation of the scanned image to a high degree, which is not only more efficient, but also respects core requirements of restoration ethics. In his talk Lutz Garmsen will give a demonstration of the versatile, multispectral Scan2Screen scanner and software.
Lutz Garmsen works as a media artist, apparatus builder, cameraman, and animator. He taught animation film, experimental film, and media installation at various universities and institutes and advises and realizes artistic and scientific media projects. In addition, he develops tools for film scientific research with experimental-technical arrangements. Since 2018, he has been working with Prof. Dr. Flueckiger’s team on the development of a transportable, versatile multispectral film scanner that specializes in experimental film and early film colors. The scanner preserves the color fidelity and characteristics of the cinema projection. He also developed a new method for digitizing lenticular film and is involved in numerous digitization projects.

12.10-13.20 Lunch Break

Tuesday, December 12, 2013 – Afternoon Session

13.20-14.10
CG Keynote: The Biology of Colour: from Flowers to Fish
Casper van den Kooi
The natural world is resplendent with colour signals that are used by animals and plants to communicate. What explains this beautiful colour diversity? In this, talk some of the common, rare and most fascinating visual effects in the natural world will be discussed. Drawing from personal research and that from others, covering aquatic and terrestrial organisms, the mechanisms through which colour is produced, how they are perceived by partners and predators and the role of the visual environment in these processes will be discussed. As a special point of interest the fascinating colours that are found under water will be elucidated— what are their optical mechanisms, how are they perceived and how do underwater optics shape their visual effects?

14.10-14.30h
In de Tropische Zee (In the Tropical Seas) (US 1914)
Elif Rongen-Kaynakçi (introduction)

14.30-15.15h
Plotting and Puzzling: the Restoration of WONDERS OF THE SEA
Lena Stötzel, Janneke v. Dalen
In 1922, John Ernest Williamson, one of the pioneers of underwater film, used his “photosphere” – a tube that descends to the bottom of the sea with a cabin at the very end that can be used for underwater filming – to make WONDERS OF THE SEA. The film follows several small plots and lines of interest: It appeals to the curiosity for the natural life under water, to the beauty of moving images shot below the water’s surface, where different laws of movement and light apply, to the desire to be part of this underwater world and to explore it through technical inventions, and to the wish to tame its dangers.
Since last year, the Austrian Film Museum started to restore and reconstruct WONDERS OF THE SEA based on the remaining film and film-related materials. The starting point is a tinted nitrate print preserved in the museum’s collection. Lena Stötzel (film restorer) and Janneke van Dalen (film collection manager) will give an insight into this ongoing restoration and share their main questions: What do the surviving prints tell us about the forms and contexts in which WONDERS OF THE SEA was presented? What approach should be taken to digitally reconstruct the colours, both from a technological and ontological point of view?

15.15-15.35 Coffee Break

15.35-16.05
In Pursuit of the “Perfect Projection”: Aesthetic and Other Properties of Light Sources in Early Film Projector
Isabel Krek
While many different factors contribute to and influence the quality of a film projection, the light source can be considered to be one of the most important elements. During the silent film era, a wide range of technologies for generating a light source co-existed and were subject to constant innovation, revision and refinement. With the aim of achieving a “better” or even the “perfect projection”, as often suggested in the discourse, strides were made towards more efficient light output, higher intensity, more even light distribution in the film frame, and so forth. These advances were significantly driven by the German industry, which played a leading role in the production of projection equipment in the first decades of cinema and thereby also contributed to a remarkably rich professional discourse that accompanied these developments. Drawing on this discourse, my talk will highlight the challenges that led to a paradigm shift for the prevailing carbon arc lamp in the early 1920s, but also produced alternative solutions that challenged the standard of the carbon arc lamp yet remained marginal despite their presence in practice and theory.
Isabel Krek is a PhD candidate and teaching assistant at the Section d’histoire et esthétique du cinéma at the University of Lausanne. She has taught at Unil and HTW Berlin and is currently curator of the apparatus collections of the Cinémathèque Suisse as well as an editorial member and author for the publication Décadrages. Cinéma, à travers champs. With her dual background as a film historian and archivist, her dissertation explores the technologies of cinema projection between 1907 and 1929.

16.05-17.05
Historical Light Sources Demonstration and Screening
Nikolaus Wostry

17.05-17.35
Round Table Day 1/2

Tuesday, December 12, 2013, 19.30h – Evening Screening
UNTERNEHMEN XARIFA
Oliver Bruck (introduction)

Wednesday, December 13, 2013 – Morning Session

9.30-10.00h
Keynote 3: The Making of UNDER THE CARRIBEAN (1954):
The Production and Technical History of a Pioneering Underwater Color Film
Michael Jung
For Hans Hass, filming underwater was part of his new research method, which was scientific diving with scuba diving equipment. Hass not only documented the fauna and flora with the film camera, but was also able to record animal behavior. This had not been possible until then, as fish and other animals do not display their natural behavior in aquariums. He coined the catchy image of the underwater researcher as a “fish among fish”. Hans Hass was later dubbed “The Aquatic Eye of science” due to his insightful underwater films.
In his lecture, Michael Jung explains the development of Hans Hass as a filmmaker, what technical equipment Hass used for his film Under the Caribbean and how the production process took place. In these pioneering times, much had to be improvised and very little could be foreseen and planned. The realization of a film project under expedition conditions is one of the most difficult conditions a filmmaker can imagine. Under the Carribean was a documentary film with the character of a feature film, the way few others had been made before – and certainly not on this scale.

10.00-10.30
TRAVERSING THE BLUE UNIVERSE; CHASING THE COELACANTH: THE FILM WORK OF HANS FRICKE
Sebastian & Prof. Hans Fricke
As a young man, zoologist Hans Fricke’s “aquaphilia” was inspired in no small part by watching Hans Hass’ UNDER THE RED SEA, and once he escaped the GDR, he was able to explore places like the Red Sea’s coral reefs himself. Ultimately the dedicated zoologist spent some 10,000 hours of his life in his beloved ‘blue universe.’ Without doubt, his most famous endeavor was to chase the living, magnificently blue fossil, the Coelacanth, with the film camera; ultimately Fricke and his team, steering their GEO and JAGO submarines to about 400 meters depth by the Comoro island, managed to provide moving images of the living animal, its surprising movements and behavior, in its natural, deep sea cave habitat for the first time. With his company Frickefilm, Sebastian Fricke has preserved his father’s moving image legacy until now and will share exemplary footage from this very important collection.
Hans Fricke studied biology in Berlin. Following his 1968 PhD and 1978 habilitation, Prof. Fricke worked at the Max Planck Institute in Seewiesen, Hebrew University of Jerusalem and University of Munich. He is best known to a general public for his underwater documentaries such as ‘Coelacanth – The Fish that Came Up from the Deep,’ produced for German television station ZDF.   – Sebastian Fricke is a director, editor and cameraman. With his company Frickefilm, he produces corporate films, commercials and training videos, one of which, in 2020, was honored with the German Economy’s Film Prize, and is safeguarding Prof. Fricke’s films.

10.30-10.50 Coffee Break

10.50-12.50
KIND DER DONAU (AU 1950)
Nikolaus Wostry (introduction)

12.50-14.00 Lunch Break

Wednesday, December 13, 2013 – Afternoon Session NHM & Metrokino
14.00 (meeting at NHM)-16.45 [A Visit to the Hans Hass Collections at NHM]
Martin Krenn – Metrokino & NHM

16.45-17.15
THE COLORFUL WORLD OF HOLIDAY CINEMA
Elif Rongen-Kaynakçi, Ulrich Ruedel

17.15-17.30
Closing and Outlook
Elza Tantcheva, Ulrich Ruedel, Nikolaus Wostry

 

Sixth International Conference Colour in Film, Berne, September 25 to 28,2022

Location: Lichtspiel / Kinemathek Bern, Sandrainstrasse 3,  3007 Berne, Switzerland

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Fifth International Conference Colour in Film London, March 11 to 13, 2020

Location: BFI Southbank, Belvedere Rd, Lambeth, London SE1 8XT, Great Britain

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Fourth International Conference Colour in Film London, February 25 to 27, 2019

Location: BFI Southbank, Belvedere Rd, Lambeth, London SE1 8XT, Great Britain

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Third International Conference Colour in Film London
March 19 to 21, 2018

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Second International Conference Colour in Film London
27 – 29 March 2017

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First International Conference Colour in Film London
2 – 3 March 2016

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Sixth International Conference Colour in Film, Berne, September 25-28,2022

Location: Lichtspiel / Kinemathek Bern, Sandrainstrasse 3,  3007 Berne, Switzerland

View the 5th International Conference Colour in Film schedule & directory.

Fifth International Conference Colour in Film London, March 11 to 13, 2020

Location: BFI Southbank, Belvedere Rd, Lambeth, London SE1 8XT, Great Britain

View the 5th International Conference Colour in Film schedule & directory.

Fourth International Conference Colour in Film London, February 25 to 27, 2019

Location: BFI Southbank, Belvedere Rd, Lambeth, London SE1 8XT, Great Britain

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Third International Conference Colour in Film London
March 19 to 21, 2018

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Second International Conference Colour in Film London
27 – 29 March 2017

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First International Conference Colour in Film London
2 – 3 March 2016

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Sixth International Conference Colour in Film, Berne, September 25 to 28,2022

Location: Lichtspiel / Kinemathek Bern, Sandrainstrasse 3,  3007 Berne, Switzerland

View the 5th International Conference Colour in Film schedule & directory.

Fifth International Conference Colour in Film London, March 11 to 13, 2020

Location: BFI Southbank, Belvedere Rd, Lambeth, London SE1 8XT, Great Britain

View the 5th International Conference Colour in Film schedule & directory.

Fourth International Conference Colour in Film London, February 25 to 27, 2019

Location: BFI Southbank, Belvedere Rd, Lambeth, London SE1 8XT, Great Britain

View the 4th International Conference Colour in Film schedule & directory.

Third International Conference Colour in Film London
March 19 to 21, 2018

View the 3rd International Conference Colour in Film 2018 schedule & directory.

Second International Conference Colour in Film London
27 – 29 March 2017

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First International Conference Colour in Film London
2 – 3 March 2016

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