Bathed in Light: Saturated Colors in Cinema

Director Barry Jenkins and playwright Tarell Alvin McCraney adapted McCraney’s unfinished play In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue for this Best Picture–winning tale of sensitive Chiron coming of age in Miami’s violent and homophobic drug culture. A trio of actors play the protagonist at three stages of his life, and Mahershala Ali won his first Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his moving performance as the boy’s unlikely father figure. To achieve the visual language for the film, Jenkins and cinematographer James Laxton worked with digital colorist Alex Bickel to imitate different film stocks in each of the film’s sections: a Fujicolor palate for Chiron’s childhood, Agfacolor for his teenage years, and Kodak when he becomes a young adult.

Shot primarily in first-person point-of-view among the dark alleys, nightclubs, and tiny apartments of Tokyo’s Kabukichō district, Gaspar Noé’s self-proclaimed “psychedelic melodrama” takes its visual cues from the director’s own experiences with hallucinogenic drugs.

In the 1990s, the aesthetic of hip-hop was forever changed by visionary director Hype Williams, whose music videos for Busta Rhymes, Missy Elliott, LL Cool J, and dozens of other artists created an entirely new visual style. Near the end of that decade, Williams directed his only feature film, Belly, which, despite making its modest budget back at the box office threefold, was derided by critics for its complicated depictions of Black male characters. Though accused of being style over substance—the film is replete with gorgeous black- and redlight washes—contemporary audiences have embraced the film as a cult classic, reappraising it for shifting the trajectory of both hip-hop and Hollywood before the industry could see what was coming.

In-person: Cliff Martinez