The Thirties In Colour

Season 1

Four-part series using rare, private and commercial film and photographic archives to give poignant and surprising insights into the 1930s, a decade which erupted into colour as polychromatic photographic technology came of age and three important processes - Dufaycolour, Technicolor and Kodachrome - were brought to the market.
4 Episodes
  • A World Away
    E1
    A World AwayThis opening part looks at the work of socialite and amateur film-maker, Rosie Newman, who used her high society contacts to secure extraordinary access to the social elite. Between 1928 and her retirement in the 1960s, Newman criss-crossed the globe and shot some of the most important colour documentary footage of the period. Some of her colour films have been seen before, but this programme features some of Newman's work that has never been broadcast and has not been seen publicly for over 70 years.
  • Wright around the World
    E2
    Wright around the WorldTogether with his younger brother Bolling, the American industrialist Harry Wright was wealthy enough to indulge his twin passions for travel and filmmaking. Both collected and shot film that captured the world at a pivotal time in history.
  • Adventures in the Americas
    E3
    Adventures in the AmericasOne of the most prolific collectors of colour film in the period was the American industrialist Harry Wright. A self-made millionaire with a passion for film, he acquired and commissioned hundreds of films, which he screened for guests at the private cinema he had built in his home in Mexico City. The programme examines Wright's extraordinary colour films of Africa and Central America, including his so-called Ethnographic Series of Unknown Mexican Indians, a unique visual record of the lives and customs of indigenous peoples living in the remote rural regions of Mexico.
  • End of an Era
    E4
    End of an EraThis final episode features colour films shot by travelling film-makers in Europe, including footage shot in Berlin decked with red swastikas at the time of the Olympic Games and rare pictures of Warsaw just weeks before the Nazi invasion.
 
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