At the core of SBS’s new documentary series is the idea that Australia is only just beginning to come to terms with its past
SBS’s new four-part series Australia in Colour is a rare example of a TV show befitting of that overused accolade, “landmark”. This engrossing production reaches far back into the past but has an air of timeliness if not urgency about it, pairing technical innovation with historical revisionism – marking a thrilling unity of themes and aesthetic. The series’ writer/directors (Lisa Matthews, Alec Morgan and Rose Hesp) spruce up the moth-eaten archive documentary look by deploying a similar technique used by the director Peter Jackson in his recent first world war doco They Shall Not Grow Old, transforming timeworn monochrome footage into colour images that sparkle with newfound vividness.
Where Jackson’s film reiterated the historical biases of old, focusing solely on servicemen and omitting the stories of other groups who contributed to the wartime effort such as nurses, the creators of Australia in Colour go the other way – viewing the series, which was made in partnership with the National Film and Sound Archive, as an opportunity to correct the record. And so this retracing of the story of modern Australia is about two kinds of colour: the literal variety that we observe with our eyes, and the symbolic sort that arises from the telling of narratives in full-bodied detail.
Continue reading...from The Guardian https://ift.tt/2EyfNjP
via
0 Comments