SBS documentary brings colour to key moments in Australian history
Some of Australia’s most historic moments captured on camera — such as the man dancing on Elizabeth St in 1945 — have been transformed from black and white to colour, as part of a groundbreaking SBS documentary series.
Until now, he has only existed in black and white but Sydney’s famous “dancing man” can finally cavort in full colour.
And it turns out he was a redhead, celebrating Victory Over Japan Day in a grey suit and a brown jumper.
The dancing man of Elizabeth St, captured by a Movietone cameraman on August 15, 1945, is among countless figures from Australian history who have languished in greytone.
But they have been liberated into living colour for a groundbreaking SBS documentary series which premieres on Wednesday night.
Australia In Colour was a four-part “labour of love” for its creators, according to producer Jo-anne McGowan of Sydney’s Stranger Than Fiction Films.
The series will include the 1901 Centennial Park ceremony to declare Australia a Federation. It will also show the nation’s oldest surviving footage showing a skater in Prince Alfred Park, Surry Hills.
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And viewers will see precious film of Australia’s involvement in war, with colour added according to strict and respectful historical research.
Sometimes the team carried out many weeks of research on a scene that will flash across the SBS screen for literally a second, McGowan said.
For example, the colours added to the dancing man were added only after the team had accessed letters in the National Film and Sound Archive in Canberra. They were by a woman who claimed to be one of the peripheral people in the picture. She was able to describe the man’s appearance.
The man’s identity has been hotly contested, but he is widely believed to be Sydney barrister Frank McAlary QC.
Before his death in 2010, McAlary publicly confirmed it was him and he was backed up by other prominent jurists who recalled the events of that day.
McGowan found documents showing that McAlary did, indeed, have ginger hair.
“One of them described him as being ‘a strident advocate, as you would expect from a redhead’,” McGowan said.
A self-confessed history tragic, McGowan has pored over countless hours of old film footage through the years. This knowledge of Australia’s archives naturally stood her in good stead when it came to selecting scenes to include in Australia In Colour.
McGowan selected footage from the National Film and Sound Archive, and the archives of the ABC, Cinesound Movietone, and commercial television stations.
Don Bradman hitting centuries, Douglas Mawson exploring the Antarctic, and Australian tours by The Beatles and Queen Elizabeth are all shown in the series in colour.
The colourisation of all the footage was undertaken by the Paris-based studio Composite Films, where a team of 30 people led by Samuel Francois-Steininger brought the images to life frame by frame with the utmost care.
First, the footage was rescanned at the highest possible resolution. Then the team at Composite Films went to work.
Coincidentally, Francois-Steininger spent 2012 living in Australia which gave him a head start in understanding the special light of this country and how it impacted on colour.
“I really wonder if I could have done this series without having lived in Australia,” Francois-Steininger said.
“We spent thousands of hours working on those researches because we have a responsibility to history.”
What does he say to purists who frown at colourisation?
“I say, ‘if the creator of those films had the colour camera at the time, do you think they would choose to film it in black and white or colour?” Francois-Steininger said.
“History was lived in colour.”
Although he is a fan of black and white, colour can deliver a greater emotional impact by connecting the viewer more realistically to the events depicted.
“You can read history in black and white, but you can live it in colour,” he said.
For McGowan, colourised footage seems to “collapse time”.
“Things that are black and white are mentally consigned to the past,” she said.
Introduce colour, and “the past is not such a foreign country”.
* Australia in Colour premieres at 8.35pm, Wednesday 6 March on SBS, and will be available after broadcast on SBS On Demand
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