The world premiere of Fantastic Flowers, a dazzling compilation of early colour films, will take place on 28 June at the Il Cinema Ritrovato festival in Bologna. The programme, which explores the use of colour techniques and the symbolic role of flowers in early cinema, is the result of a cross-border restoration project funded by the Association des Cinémathèques Européennes (ACE) through its Joint Restoration Grant.
This year’s award-winning project was a collaboration between the CINEMATEK – Royal Film Archive of Belgium, Eye Filmmuseum (The Netherlands), and Filmarchiv Austria. The first public screening was held on 24 May at Eye Filmmuseum in Amsterdam, with live music and presentations by the partner archives. Following Bologna, the programme will tour other festivals and cinémathèques.
A Unique Grant to Support Cross-European Film Heritage
The Joint Restoration Grant was launched by ACE in 2022 as part of its A Season of Classic Films programme. Thanks to additional funding from the European Commission, the initiative supports transnational restoration projects involving at least three European film archives. In 2024, a jury comprising Oscar-winning filmmaker István Szabó, ARTE’s Feature Film Department Deputy Head Barbara Häbe, and film curator-educator Eva Sangiorgi selected two winners from applications submitted by film heritage institutions across Europe.
Restoring Fantastic Flowers (1906–1920)
Fantastic Flowers comprises 15 silent short films produced between 1906 and 1920, showcasing the vivid aesthetics of the early stencil-colour era. Each frame was coloured using the Pathécolor process or similar techniques, resulting in a kaleidoscope of floral imagery. Curated around the theme of “flowers”, the programme features everything from ornamental gardens and flower parades to Japanese floral traditions and the use of flowers in fantastical trick films.
Despite being more than a century old, many original nitrate prints remain strikingly vivid. Stencil-coloured films, especially those coloured via Pathécolor, stand out in archive collections. These colours were painstakingly applied to black-and-white stock when film emulsions were not yet colour-sensitive, making them an early milestone in cinematic artistry.
Technical Excellence and Historical Insights
The restoration involved meticulous work by Haghefilm laboratory, using wet-gate scanning at 2K resolution via the Oxberry scanner—ideal for shrunken and fragile material. “Correcting previous repairs that used white opaque tape revealed image areas that had been obscured. It was time-consuming, but worth it,” said Bin Li, film restorer at Haghefilm.
Adeline Law, who supported the scanning process, noted the use of a customised Look-Up Table to accurately map colours: “This allowed us to preserve the rich spectrum of the stencil-coloured films and remain faithful to the original prints.”
Nick Verlinden, film restorer at CINEMATEK added, “Stabilisation was tricky because the flowers often moved or transformed, so they couldn’t serve as fixed reference points.”
Today’s digital technologies allow precise frame-by-frame grading and individual colour processing, unlocking vibrant hues and exposing sophisticated techniques—like hand colouring, tinting, and colour cross-fades—that go far beyond simple stencilling.
“Since these films were originally shot on black-and-white stock with colours added later, reproducing them on colour film negatives compromises both the added colours and the areas deliberately left black-and-white”, said Elif Rongen-Kaynakçi, Curator at Eye Filmmuseum. “Digital technology allows us to accurately recreate this delicate balance within each frame.”
Archival research also played a crucial role in the restoration process. One example is Le Chrysantème, Roi de l’Automne, identified through archival records as a 1914 Eclair Scientia film.
Bruno Mestdagh, Head of the Digital Film Collection at the Royal Film Archive of Belgium, added that one of the films showcases the production facilities of Vilmorin, a historic seed producer and botanical company that still exists today. “Over the years, Vilmorin’s catalogues have featured a distinctive design and artistic style,” he said. “These catalogues inspired the choice of fonts used in the design of the new title cards and logo.”
The restored programme not only offers a glimpse into the rich visual world of early cinema but also contributes to the ongoing debate around colourisation, particularly in the digital age. As AI tools prompt renewed interest in colour reproduction, Fantastic Flowers invites audiences to appreciate the artistry and craft of early colour pioneers.
