 era onwards. Australian filmmakers and commentators frequently expressed the desire to project the authentic colours of the country on screen. But what did they mean by authentic? How were the post-war cinematic palettes projected onto Australia’s unique landscapes and cultures? How can we understand the hues of these mid-century film stocks and systems in the context of the longer arc of the production and use of indigenous colours and pigments in Australia?
Kangaroo (1952), The Queen in Australia (1954)  and Jedda (1955)  all made some claim to being Australia’s first feature film in natural colour. Those claims were suitably qualified, of course. Kangaroo was the first film shot in ‘natural colour’ in Australia. (Albeit with Americans as the lead actors and occupying all the key creative roles.) Processed in the United States, Kangaroo was edited and post-produced in Los Angeles under the personal supervision of Daryl Zanuck. The Queen in Australia, made with considerable input from British filmmakers, utilising Ferrania Color and post-produced in London, was Australia’s first ‘natural colour’ feature documentary.) And Jedda, shot on Gevacolor and processed in London, was the first ‘natural colour’ feature conceived of and produced by Australians who featured both behind and in front of the camera.
Film historian Tom Gunning has observed that, as an art form in which scientific and technological processes play a large role, “cinema has often been described in terms of ‘progress’ from the simple to the more complex.”  As if moving pictures, across the centuries, around the globe, all marched towards a single point in history. And that, in a series of technological breakthroughs, the medium gradually developed from silent black and white to sound and colour. Art forms and media, however, are constantly in transition. Waxing and waning across long arcs of time. Film and photography did not develop in a straight line but through a series of projects and experiments, often overlapping and circling back on each other. Far from viewing early silent films in monochrome, audiences were often treated to dazzling displays of colour through the application of pigments and inks to images that were already photographed. Colour was often applied to film stocks in early silent cinema in an aesthetic that aspired less to realism than fantasy.  Motion picture photography in colour, which took many years and the efforts of hundreds of people to perfect, was often referred to as ‘natural colour’ and, at least partly, associated with realism. Kinemacolor, the most successful of the early ’natural colour’ film processes, which flourished from around 1908 to 1913, was often described as “presenting the colours of nature”. , In Australia, reviews of what appears to have been our first Kinemacolor short Melbourne in her Natural Colours, also emphasised the remarkable realism of the colours. Immediacy was often emphasised with phrases like ‘colour in the moment’. A common objection was that colour motion pictures were fatiguing to the eye. Red, especially, was suspect in this regard. 
It is estimated that more than two hundred separate processes went into the development of Technicolor which was to dominate colour film production from the 1920s to the 1950s. It was promoted as the finest ‘natural colour’ picture ever produced and even “Technicolor is natural colour.” The process was said to “throw upon the screen a continual succession of natural colours that copy nature with the fidelity of a finely executed oil painting.” For several decades, producers wanting access to its colour film process were required to rent Technicolor cameras, employ an additional cameraperson supplied by the company, purchase make-up specially designed by Max Factor, buy film stock from Kodak Eastman and have all film processing and printing carried out by the company. In addition, they were required to employ one of the company’s Colour Consultants and adopt restrictive rules about the use of colour in the film’s production design. Given Australia’s relatively sm