Chromatic Cinema provides the first wide-ranging historical overview of screen color, exploring the changing uses and meanings of color in moving images, from hand painting in early skirt dance films to current trends in digital color manipulation. Offers both a history and a theory of screen color in the first full-length study ever published Provides an in-depth yet accessible account of color's spread through and ultimate effacement of black-and-white cinema, exploring the technological, cultural, economic, and artistic factors that have defined this evolving symbiosis Engages with film studies, art history, visual culture and technology studies in a truly interdisciplinary manner Includes 65 full-color illustrations of films ranging from Expressionist animation to Hollywood and Bollywood musicals, from the US ’indie' boom to1980s neo-noir, Hong Kong cinema, and recent comic-book films