INSpiREzine Stars! | Page 63

Russell Prize from the American Astronomical Society, in 1976. She died December 7, 1979 and is remembered not only for her stand alone scientific contributions but also for the trail she blazed into what was at the time a largely male-dominated scientific community.

- Elizabeth Chen-Baker

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

ELISABETH THUILLIER

“The colour film has the most interest of all.…The audience literally ‘sits up and takes notice’ when the first scene of a coloured picture film flashes on the screen.”

Early cinema is often remembered as an exclusively black-and-white genre. But in fact, nearly 80 percent of early films were made in colour - tinted, toned, and painted with fantastical colours that produced surreal effects. Cinematic history frequently neglects the artistic women responsible for the meticulous and exhausting work of hand-colouring film - women who came to dominate a niche that proved to be pivotal in cinematography.

Elisabeth Thuillier was an early French film colourist who played a focal role in early filmmaking at the turn of the 20th century. Thuillier's work relied entirely on hand-painting each frame of the filmstrip. Considering that a movie reel could contain up to 14 000 frames, her crew of 225 women amazingly applied single shades of colour, frame by frame in an assembly line like manner.

Thuillier is particularly remembered today for her colourization work on the fantasy space films of Georges Méliès, especially his "A Trip to the Moon" from 1902.

- Stephanie Proulx