Liz Watkins
My research focuses on film histories of colour and the archive, gesture, feminist theory, the aesthetics and ethics of the retrospective digitsation and colourisation of black-and-white photochemical images and film texts.
I was a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Leeds and a Research Associate for a project on 'Colour Films in Britain 1900-1955' at the University of Bristol. My research has been supported by a British Academy Small Research Grant, and fellowships at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin, and the University of Oxford.
My publications include journal articles in Screen, Journal for Cultural Research, Photographies, British Journal of Cinema and Television, Paragraph, and Parallax. I have edited collections on British Colour Cinema: Practices and Theories (BFI/ Palgrave Macmillan) and Color and the Moving Image: History, Theory, Aesthetics, Archive (Routledge) with Sarah Street and Simon Brown, and on Gesture and Film: Signalling New Critical Perspecitves (Routledge) with Nicholas Chare. Forthcoming publications include a monograph on Colour, Film, Theory and the Archive (Routledge) and a book on Andrea Arnold: Unsettling the Cinematic (Edinburgh University Press). I am co-editing a journal Special Issue on Colourised Histories: Digital/ Analogue Photography and Film Archives Now.
I co-founded and co-convene the British Association of Film, Television and Screen Studies Colour and Film Scholarly Interest Group for the. I oversaw the the Association’s Research Network of Special Interest Groups (2019-2024) and I was elected as Chair of the Association (2022-24).
Website: BAFTSS Colour and Film SIG https://colourandfilm.com/cfps/
Twitter/X: @BAFTSSColorFilm and @liziwat
Email: e.i.watkins@leeds.ac.uk or liz.i.watkins@gmail.com
I was a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Leeds and a Research Associate for a project on 'Colour Films in Britain 1900-1955' at the University of Bristol. My research has been supported by a British Academy Small Research Grant, and fellowships at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin, and the University of Oxford.
My publications include journal articles in Screen, Journal for Cultural Research, Photographies, British Journal of Cinema and Television, Paragraph, and Parallax. I have edited collections on British Colour Cinema: Practices and Theories (BFI/ Palgrave Macmillan) and Color and the Moving Image: History, Theory, Aesthetics, Archive (Routledge) with Sarah Street and Simon Brown, and on Gesture and Film: Signalling New Critical Perspecitves (Routledge) with Nicholas Chare. Forthcoming publications include a monograph on Colour, Film, Theory and the Archive (Routledge) and a book on Andrea Arnold: Unsettling the Cinematic (Edinburgh University Press). I am co-editing a journal Special Issue on Colourised Histories: Digital/ Analogue Photography and Film Archives Now.
I co-founded and co-convene the British Association of Film, Television and Screen Studies Colour and Film Scholarly Interest Group for the. I oversaw the the Association’s Research Network of Special Interest Groups (2019-2024) and I was elected as Chair of the Association (2022-24).
Website: BAFTSS Colour and Film SIG https://colourandfilm.com/cfps/
Twitter/X: @BAFTSSColorFilm and @liziwat
Email: e.i.watkins@leeds.ac.uk or liz.i.watkins@gmail.com
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Colorization describes the digitization and retrospective addition of color to photographic and film materials (celluloid nitrate, glass negatives) initially made and circulated in a black-and-white format. Revisiting the controversial 1980s colorization of 24 classic Hollywood studio titles, which incited debate over questions of copyright, authorship and artistic expression, this essay examines the use of colorization to interpret museum collections for new audiences. The aesthetics of colorization have been criticized for prioritizing image content over the history of film technologies, practices and exhibition. An examination of They Shall Not Grow Old (Jackson, 2018) finds a use of digital editing and coloring techniques in the colorization of First World War film footage held in the Imperial War Museum archives that is familiar to the director’s fiction films. Jackson’s film is a commemorative project, yet the “holistic unity” of authorial technique operates across fragments of archive film and photographs to imbricate of fiction and nonfiction, signaling vital questions around the ethics and ideologies of “natural color”, historiography, and the authenticity of materials and spectator experience.
ISBN 978-3-96311-534-9
https://www.routledge.com/Gesture-and-Film-Signalling-New-Critical-Perspectives/Chare-Watkins/p/book/9781138900196
Table of Contents
Introduction: Gesture in Film Nicholas Chare and Liz Watkins.
1. Cinematic Gesture: The Ghost in the Machine Laura Mulvey.
2. Speech-Gesture Mimicry in Performance: An Actor → Audience, Author → Actor, Audience → Actor Triangle David McNeill.
3. Films, Gestures, Species Barbara Creed.
4. Gesture in Shoah Nicholas Chare.
5. Martial Gestures Paul Bowman.
6. The Disquiet of the Everyday: Gesture and Bad Timing Liz Watkins.
7. Image as Gesture: Notes on Aemout Mik’s Communitas and the Modern Political Film Patricia Pisters.
8. Between Trauma and Ecstasy: Reading the Cinematic Gesture of Marilyn Monroe with Aby Warburg Griselda Pollock.
9. The Time of Gesture in Cinema and its Ethics Elizabeth Cowie.
10. The exchange of two fantasies and the contact of two epidermises: Gestures of touch in Gattaca (1997), The Talented Mr Ripley (1999) and The Piano (1993) Naomi Segal.
11. A Mark on the Canvas Carol Mayo Jenkins.
http://iamhist.net/2020/01/views-on-colour/
The association of colour, sensation and the body, which is noted by Jacqueline Lichtenstein and Merleau-Ponty through their insights on colour as the disturbing of structure and form, offers a way in which to foreground a series of questions about embodiment and the discourse of vision. An analysis of the chromatics of Red Road (Dir. Andrea Arnold, UK/Denmark, 2006), which features a female protagonist who works as a surveillance officer in a CCTV control room, offers a way to echo and disrupt the ‘mechanisms and techniques of reality-control’ (de Lauretis 1984, 84) and to challenge what constitutes socially acceptable bodies and the cinematic institution of the image of woman. In Red Road the legible architecture of the film image emerges through the myriad colours of light reflected by a camera lens and the effacement of details in areas affected by shadow and variations in focus. The camera is almost always
in motion and responsive to the gestures of the protagonist’s body, signalling the potential of the chromatics of Red Road to trouble the structures of seeing familiar to cinematic representation. Colour and perception remain open to contingency and change, fostering alternative subject positions that trace the interrelations of the body — its senses and sensations — and the discourse of vision. The unsettling of perception refigures the encounter between the self and others through the imaginary or fictional worlds that remind us of the uncertainties and vulnerability of such interactions.
Volume 38, Number 1, March 2015
Screening Embodiment (Special Issue)
Edited by Nicholas Chare and Liz Watkins
Contents
Introduction: Screening Embodiment
NICHOLAS CHARE AND LIZ WATKINS
‘Her hair over her arms and her arms full of flowers’: Love and Unknowing in Alina Marazzi’s Un’ora sola ti vorrei (For One More Hour with You) (2002)
EMMA WILSON
The CrossFit Sensorium: Visuality, Affect and Immersive Sport
LESLIE HEYWOOD
Fugitive Aesthetics: Embodiment, Sexuality and Escape from Alcatraz
NICHOLAS CHARE
‘To see what’s down there’: Embodiment, Gestural Archaeologies and Materializing Futures
ANGELA PICCINI
Filming Dance: Embodied Syntax in Sasha Waltz’s S
HELEN A. FIELDING
Eyes at the Back of His Head: Precarious Masculinity and the Modern Tracking Shot
JENNIFER M. BARKER AND ADAM COTTREL
Unsettling Perception: Screening Surveillance and the Body in Red Road
LIZ WATKINS
What Can a Body Do? Answers from Trablus, Cairo, Beirut and Algiers
LAURA U. MARKS
Notes on Contributors
https://www.routledge.com/Color-and-the-Moving-Image-History-Theory-Aesthetics-Archive/Brown-Street-Watkins/p/book/9780415892643
Nicholas Chare (University of Melbourne) and Liz Watkins (University of Leeds), ‘Introduction: Gesture in Film’
Laura Mulvey, Birkbeck College, University of London, ‘Cinematic Gesture: The Ghost in the Machine’
David McNeill, University of Chicago, ‘Speech-Gesture Mimicry in Performance: An ActorAudience, AuthorActor, AudienceActor Triangle’
Nicholas Chare, University of Melbourne, ‘Gesture in Shoah’
Barbara Creed, University of Melbourne, ‘Films, Gestures, Species’
Liz Watkins, University of Leeds, ‘The Disquiet of the Everyday: Gesture and Bad Timing’
Patricia Pisters, University of Amsterdam, ‘Image as Gesture: Notes on Aernout Mik’s Communitas and the Modern Political Film’
Elizabeth Cowie, University of Kent, ‘The Time of Gesture in Cinema and its Ethics’
Naomi Segal, Birkbeck College, University of London, ‘The exchange of two fantasies and the contact of two epidermises’: Gestures of touch in Gattaca (1997), The Talented Mr Ripley (1999) and The Piano (1993)’
Carol Mayo Jenkins, University of Tennessee, ‘A Mark on the Canvas’
https://www.bloomsbury.com/au/british-colour-cinema-9781844574131/
'Mapping the Antarctic' details some of the experiments with colour and photography on late 1800s and early 1900s expeditions, led by Scott, Amundsen, Mawson and Shackleton. The essay includes an analysis of selection of Edward A. Wilson's Antarctic sketches and watercolours. NOTE: this chapter can be viewed on Google Books
Colorization describes the digitization and retrospective addition of color to photographic and film materials (celluloid nitrate, glass negatives) initially made and circulated in a black-and-white format. Revisiting the controversial 1980s colorization of 24 classic Hollywood studio titles, which incited debate over questions of copyright, authorship and artistic expression, this essay examines the use of colorization to interpret museum collections for new audiences. The aesthetics of colorization have been criticized for prioritizing image content over the history of film technologies, practices and exhibition. An examination of They Shall Not Grow Old (Jackson, 2018) finds a use of digital editing and coloring techniques in the colorization of First World War film footage held in the Imperial War Museum archives that is familiar to the director’s fiction films. Jackson’s film is a commemorative project, yet the “holistic unity” of authorial technique operates across fragments of archive film and photographs to imbricate of fiction and nonfiction, signaling vital questions around the ethics and ideologies of “natural color”, historiography, and the authenticity of materials and spectator experience.
ISBN 978-3-96311-534-9
https://www.routledge.com/Gesture-and-Film-Signalling-New-Critical-Perspectives/Chare-Watkins/p/book/9781138900196
Table of Contents
Introduction: Gesture in Film Nicholas Chare and Liz Watkins.
1. Cinematic Gesture: The Ghost in the Machine Laura Mulvey.
2. Speech-Gesture Mimicry in Performance: An Actor → Audience, Author → Actor, Audience → Actor Triangle David McNeill.
3. Films, Gestures, Species Barbara Creed.
4. Gesture in Shoah Nicholas Chare.
5. Martial Gestures Paul Bowman.
6. The Disquiet of the Everyday: Gesture and Bad Timing Liz Watkins.
7. Image as Gesture: Notes on Aemout Mik’s Communitas and the Modern Political Film Patricia Pisters.
8. Between Trauma and Ecstasy: Reading the Cinematic Gesture of Marilyn Monroe with Aby Warburg Griselda Pollock.
9. The Time of Gesture in Cinema and its Ethics Elizabeth Cowie.
10. The exchange of two fantasies and the contact of two epidermises: Gestures of touch in Gattaca (1997), The Talented Mr Ripley (1999) and The Piano (1993) Naomi Segal.
11. A Mark on the Canvas Carol Mayo Jenkins.
http://iamhist.net/2020/01/views-on-colour/
The association of colour, sensation and the body, which is noted by Jacqueline Lichtenstein and Merleau-Ponty through their insights on colour as the disturbing of structure and form, offers a way in which to foreground a series of questions about embodiment and the discourse of vision. An analysis of the chromatics of Red Road (Dir. Andrea Arnold, UK/Denmark, 2006), which features a female protagonist who works as a surveillance officer in a CCTV control room, offers a way to echo and disrupt the ‘mechanisms and techniques of reality-control’ (de Lauretis 1984, 84) and to challenge what constitutes socially acceptable bodies and the cinematic institution of the image of woman. In Red Road the legible architecture of the film image emerges through the myriad colours of light reflected by a camera lens and the effacement of details in areas affected by shadow and variations in focus. The camera is almost always
in motion and responsive to the gestures of the protagonist’s body, signalling the potential of the chromatics of Red Road to trouble the structures of seeing familiar to cinematic representation. Colour and perception remain open to contingency and change, fostering alternative subject positions that trace the interrelations of the body — its senses and sensations — and the discourse of vision. The unsettling of perception refigures the encounter between the self and others through the imaginary or fictional worlds that remind us of the uncertainties and vulnerability of such interactions.
Volume 38, Number 1, March 2015
Screening Embodiment (Special Issue)
Edited by Nicholas Chare and Liz Watkins
Contents
Introduction: Screening Embodiment
NICHOLAS CHARE AND LIZ WATKINS
‘Her hair over her arms and her arms full of flowers’: Love and Unknowing in Alina Marazzi’s Un’ora sola ti vorrei (For One More Hour with You) (2002)
EMMA WILSON
The CrossFit Sensorium: Visuality, Affect and Immersive Sport
LESLIE HEYWOOD
Fugitive Aesthetics: Embodiment, Sexuality and Escape from Alcatraz
NICHOLAS CHARE
‘To see what’s down there’: Embodiment, Gestural Archaeologies and Materializing Futures
ANGELA PICCINI
Filming Dance: Embodied Syntax in Sasha Waltz’s S
HELEN A. FIELDING
Eyes at the Back of His Head: Precarious Masculinity and the Modern Tracking Shot
JENNIFER M. BARKER AND ADAM COTTREL
Unsettling Perception: Screening Surveillance and the Body in Red Road
LIZ WATKINS
What Can a Body Do? Answers from Trablus, Cairo, Beirut and Algiers
LAURA U. MARKS
Notes on Contributors
https://www.routledge.com/Color-and-the-Moving-Image-History-Theory-Aesthetics-Archive/Brown-Street-Watkins/p/book/9780415892643
Nicholas Chare (University of Melbourne) and Liz Watkins (University of Leeds), ‘Introduction: Gesture in Film’
Laura Mulvey, Birkbeck College, University of London, ‘Cinematic Gesture: The Ghost in the Machine’
David McNeill, University of Chicago, ‘Speech-Gesture Mimicry in Performance: An ActorAudience, AuthorActor, AudienceActor Triangle’
Nicholas Chare, University of Melbourne, ‘Gesture in Shoah’
Barbara Creed, University of Melbourne, ‘Films, Gestures, Species’
Liz Watkins, University of Leeds, ‘The Disquiet of the Everyday: Gesture and Bad Timing’
Patricia Pisters, University of Amsterdam, ‘Image as Gesture: Notes on Aernout Mik’s Communitas and the Modern Political Film’
Elizabeth Cowie, University of Kent, ‘The Time of Gesture in Cinema and its Ethics’
Naomi Segal, Birkbeck College, University of London, ‘The exchange of two fantasies and the contact of two epidermises’: Gestures of touch in Gattaca (1997), The Talented Mr Ripley (1999) and The Piano (1993)’
Carol Mayo Jenkins, University of Tennessee, ‘A Mark on the Canvas’
https://www.bloomsbury.com/au/british-colour-cinema-9781844574131/
'Mapping the Antarctic' details some of the experiments with colour and photography on late 1800s and early 1900s expeditions, led by Scott, Amundsen, Mawson and Shackleton. The essay includes an analysis of selection of Edward A. Wilson's Antarctic sketches and watercolours. NOTE: this chapter can be viewed on Google Books
The interdisciplinary conference examined the history of exploration through film, photography and photographers, scientific techniques, artistic practices and in the mediation and display of museum collections for exhibition: from photographic materials and technologies to the darkroom practices that shape visual representations and underpin or counter voyage narratives. The conference examined photographic experiments with technologies in extreme environments (telephoto lenses, glass plate negatives, flashlight photography, chrono-photography, photomicrography, cinematography) as practices that have have made otherwise inaccessible geographies visible. It brought together scholars, photographers and archivists who work on the histories, theories and philosophies of photography, film and audio-visual forms which intersect with narratives of exploration: its politics, ideologies (gender, class, imperialism) their subversion and subtexts through to its use in educational and entertainment forms both past and present.
Conference organised by Dr Liz Watkins (University of Leeds) and Lizelle de Jager at the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich.
The symposium examines colour – its specific hues, meanings and perception – as it continues to be a contentious issue in the study of film. From the history of its technologies and the production of a ‘natural colour’ image to its association with all that is artificial and unreal, the interpretation of colour has been closely linked to its cultural, social and historical contexts. Colour in Context was a one-day interdisciplinary symposium that offered a space in which to discuss the diverse ways in which filmmakers and artists have used colour (and the strategy of its absence) as a technique of cinematic expression as well as those who have made a subversive use of colour that is intended to disrupt cinematic forms of representation in a range of cultural, social or historical contexts.
Symposium organised by Dr Liz Watkins (University of Leeds) and Sarah Street (University of Bristol)
Symposium organised by Dr Liz Watkins (University of Leeds). Funded by a British Academy Small Research Grant.
Speakers: Elif Rongen-Kaynakçi (Curator of Silent Film at EYE Film Museum, Amsterdam), Professor Ulrich Ruedel (HTW Berlin), Dr Eirik Frisvold Hanssen (National Library of Norway), Lucy Carty (Artist in Residence, Scott Polar Research Institute), Professor Sarah Street (University of Bristol), Professor Griselda Pollock (University of Leeds), Dr Hanna Hölling (University College London).
The symposium addressed questions of intermediality and transitional media in the making and exhibition of photography, film and its archives. As a polemical statement – the death of cinema – called attention to the impact of digital media on the ways in which films are made and the cinematic archive studied. The perceived shift – from photographic images made and stored on a material base (celluloid nitrate and acetate film stocks) and susceptible to light, heat and touch – to their digital simulacra, initially incited debate around cinema and what might be lost.
This symposium examined intermediality of film media, archives and exhibition contexts as a way to consider the interconnectedness and mutability of the technologies, aesthetics, materials and forms of image-making that have and continue to be integral to the history, circulation, and exhibition of film and photographic archives.
Symposium themes included: 1) Mediation of landscapes the role of film and photography in geographical exploration: mapping and shaping understanding of a region, the use of expedition materials in public exhibition; 2) Conservation and exhibition of archival materials online: theories of digital/ analogue photography; the curiosity of access to single frames of film displaced from the context of performance and the cinematic illusion of movement; indexicality. 3) Archival lives of film and photography: theories and processes that query ideas of permanence and impermanence through transfer to a new medium..