Lenticular Spectacles: Kodacolor’s Fit in the Amateur Arsenal

On the American marketplace for only a short period, and more precious and temperamental than black-and-white 16mm film stock, Kodacolor (in production from 1928 through 1935) is occasionally encountered in home movie collections but has not been examined in a scholarly context. This essay contextualizes the format and will make a case for its importance to screen studies, especially for amateur film history. Kodacolor provided the home moviemaker with something even Hollywood filmmakers did not have at the time: a relatively easy way to make and show color films. After establishing the history of Kodacolor, I explore one family’s aesthetically and technically fascinating use of the format. This amateur film collection, on deposit at Northeast Historic Film, facilitates some pertinent observations about how and why this technology was employed and why it had such a short-lived existence.