Tracking Color in Cinema and Art

'This is an extraordinary achievement -- a major work (perhaps Branigan's most impressive yet) by one of our most important film theorists and philosophers. While color studies in film have exploded over the last fifteen years, most of the work has moved very cautiously and largely in a historicist fashion, one that privileges accounts of emerging technological innovations and to a lesser extent style at the expense of the fascinating perceptual questions color and color filmmaking raises. Branigan takes these questions head on and the results are positively stunning. It is the first book -- in film studies, at least -- to deal at great length and specificity with the question of color perception and color style. As I mentioned, most books shy away from stylistic analysis and the rich philosophical questions that color poses about perception and, as Branigan indicates very daringly, about how real the real world is.' -- Brian Price, University of Toronto

'Branigan takes a Wittgensteinian approach to color that "focuses not on what color is, but on how it functions, what it does for us, what we make of it." For our delectation, he offers us an extraordinarily rich and provocative feast that takes us beyond cinema to the uses and meanings of color in painting, philosophy and literature.' -- C.L. Hardin, Professor of Philosophy, Emeritus, Syracuse University. Author of Color for Philosophers: Unweaving the Rainbow (1993).