3rd International Conference Colour in Film 2018

In this presentation I will examine the use of applied colour in film material relating to Roald Amundsen's polar expeditions in the 1910s and 1920s, and the preservation and dissemination of such material. The films were made public within a broader intermedial context relating to Amundsen's expeditions as media events, and colour is prevalent in several of the contemporary media manifestations of his endeavours - tinted and toned film images coexist along with strikingly coloured glass plates and other forms of photographic and printed objects. In addition, a number of striking descriptions of colour in Amundsen's own account of the South Pole expedition, published in 1912, suggest a variety of ways to think about colour, including experiential, material and technological approaches that both seem to underscore and destabilise the colonial and nationalist connotations associated with polar expeditions.