This event is part of the series ‘In Conversation: New Directions in Art History’, which will explore the changing modes and methodologies of approaching visual and material worlds. Running from January to March 2023 at Paul Mellon Centre and Online.
White cinema/colonial pink — a research talk by Prof. Erica Carter (KCL)
This paper derives from my current project on white cinemagoing in the British colonial territories after World War II. The route I take though cinema history is an intimate one, drawing on my own family history as the starting point for a histoire croisée of cinemagoing practice amongst white British colonials in tropical environments. In the paper, I use an imagined journey (my mother’s) through post-war downtown Nassau, capital of the Bahamas, to explore the pertinence of categories more familiar from digital screen studies – navigation, immersion and performance – to histories of cinemagoing in segregated white expatriate milieux. My focus is on the practice of cinemagoing as a mode of “atmospheric spectactorship” (Chenshu Zhou); I centre this talk especially on colour in the urban environment, specifically, on the prominence in downtown Nassau of the colour known as “colonial pink”, and on its association with colour in contemporary visual practice including amateur photography and filmmaking, as well as moviegoing experiences in the city’s whites-only shorefront cinema, The Savoy.
This talk is coupled with Kirsty Sinclair Dootson (Lecturer in Film and Media, UCL)’s presentation “Decolonising in Technicolor: Post-war Colour Cinema in Britain and India”
WHEN: February 8 2023, 5:00-7:00PM
WHERE: Paul Mellon Centre and Online
BOOK TICKETS: Here and click here for more info.