This new AFI Film Reader is the first comprehensive collection of original essays on the use of color in film. Contributors from diverse film studies backgrounds consider the importance of color throughout the history of the medium, assessing not only the theoretical implications of color on the screen, but also the ways in which developments in cinematographic technologies transformed the aesthetics of color and the nature of film archiving and restoration.

Introduction: Simon Brown, Sarah Street, Liz Watkins I. HISTORY. Chapter 1. Simon Brown, "The Brighton School and the Quest for Natural Color" - Redux. Chapter 2. Hilde D'haeyere, Out of the Blue: Color Inserts in Mack Sennett's Comedy Shorts of the Late Twenties. Chapter 3. Charles O'Brien, Technicolor Song Sequences: Music and Color in King of Jazz (1930). Chapter 4. Anna Batistová, Glorious Agfacolor, Breathtaking Totalvision and...Changing Color Process in Czechoslovak Cinema at the Beginning of the "Scope" Boom. Chapter 5. Sarah Street, Glorious Adventures with Prizma. Chapter 6. Andrew Robert Johnston, The Color of Prometheus: Thomas Wilfred's Lumia and the Projection of Transcendence. II. THEORY. Chapter 7. Tom Gunning, Where Do Colors Go at Night? Chapter 8. Rosalind Galt, "Brash...Indecent...Libertine": Aesthetics and Film Theory Versus Derek Jarman's Queer Colors. Chapter 9. Jocelyn Szczepaniak-Gillece, The Hues of Memory, the Shades of Experience: The Color of Time in Syndromes and a Century. Chapter 10. Philipp Schmerheim, From Psycho to Pleasantville: The Role of Color and Black-and-White Imagery for Film Experience. III. AESTHETICS. Chapter 11. Joshua Yumibe, The Illuminated Fairytale: The Colors of Paul Fejos's Lonesome (1928). Chapter 12. Charles Tepperman, Color Unlimited: Amateur Color Cinema in the 1930s. Chapter 13. Fiona Handyside, Color and Meaning in the Films of Eric Rohmer. Chapter 14. Heather Heckman, The Cameraman and the Glamour-Puss: Technicolor Cinematography and Design in John Ford's Drums Along the Mohawk. Chapter 15. Scott Higgins, Chromo-Drama: Innovation and convention in Douglas Sirk's Color Designs. Chapter 16. Steven Jacobs, Colour and Set Design in Alfred Hitchcock's Rope, Under Capricorn, and Dial M for Murder. Chapter 17. John Belton, Color and Meaning in Marnie. IV. ARCHIVE. Chapter 18. Jason Gendler, Are My Eyes Really Brown? The Aesthetics of Colorization in Casablanca. Chapter 19. William Brown, "Those Men Are Not White!": Neuroscience, Digital Imagery and Color in O Brother, Where Art Thou? Chapter 20. Ulrich Rüdel, Daniela Currò and Claudy Op den Kamp, Towards a More Accurate Preservation of Color: Heritage, Research and the Film Restoration Laboratory. Chapter 21. Liz Watkins, Herbert G. Ponting's Materials and Texts.