New docu series 'Colorful Memories' revives archives in natural colors 

The series “Colorful Memories” revisits the stories of several Arab personalities and recalls their related archives after processing and restoring their true colors through a colorisation process overseen by several directors, technicians, and heritage experts, in addition to the use of an artificial intelligence application.

The series consists of 15 episodes, each lasting 15 minutes, where an Arab guest narrates memories or a story they experienced in a historical period in each episode. The related, uncolored archive is then recalled and processed through several stages until, in the final stage, it takes on the color closest to the truth as it was during that time.

The episodes cover stories from Palestine, Lebanon, Egypt, Qatar, Algeria, and Yemen, ranging from pivotal political moments to social, economic, and cultural life in those countries. In addition to the main storyteller, each episode features a heritage expert who verifies the colorisation process against the prevailing colors of the time.

Mohamed El-Saeidi, the series’s executive producer and general manager of Noon Films, said the aim of colorising the archive is to eliminate the mental and temporal barrier between the viewer and the archive. Many have felt that their uncolored national and regional archives represent a different region and people. The color difference has created a barrier that resists our integration into the historical narrative and perhaps our enjoyment of watching it, discouraging some from watching historical films.

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Work on the project began in March 2020 with research and development for the first episode of the series, which featured the memories of an 80-year-old Palestinian man about the orange grove his father owned in Jaffa. El-Saeidi added that this topic was chosen to emphasise the significant difference between watching footage of oranges, farms, and carts of the era in the streets before and after colorisation. The series’ archive was collected from approximately 14 libraries, institutions, and local television stations. At the same time, six directors from various Arab countries worked on the project, along with a research and preparation team distributed across several Arab countries.

Abdul Aalim Al-Shamiri, the executive director of RUM, said that restoring and colorising the archive involved a lengthy process and many attempts to arrive at the optimal method of execution, which ultimately resulted in the archive seen in “Colourful Memories.” RUM Pictures, a Jordan-based post-production company responsible for processing and colorising the archive, formed a large team that worked on the archive in three stages: processing, restoring, and improving its quality. This stage is carried out through human effort and a well-known program for enhancing the clarity of black-and-white archives.

The second phase involves using one of the artificial intelligence applications developed by RMM Pictures in collaboration with a programmer to determine the possible colors for the archive footage. This application automatically completed approximately 30 per cent of the colorisation process.

A team of 23 technicians at RMM Pictures played a decisive role in the colorisation process. Their tasks were divided between separating elements of each archive shot to facilitate colorisation independently of other elements and applying colors corresponding to the reference images identified by the research. They were in line with the observations of heritage experts in the series. Finally, they performed the quality control of the footage after all the technical processes were completed.

Al-Shammari confirmed that the most significant challenge faced during the colorisation process was the inability to obtain the original archive source, the film reels on which the footage was initially recorded. Consequently, they could not obtain the complete data of each shot, which would have allowed for full-color saturation. Al-Shammari attributed this to the weak infrastructure of Arab archive libraries and the fact that international libraries retain relatively small-sized electronic copies to avoid occupying large capacities on their servers.

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The documentary series, produced by Al Jazeera Documentary Channel, premiered the first episode of “Colourful Memories” on 7 April on the Al Jazeera Documentary Channel. In the coming weeks, numerous Arab cultural and cinematic centers will also host screenings of some episodes from the series.

It is worth noting that Noon Films (www.noonfilms.com) was established in 2010 and is headquartered in London. The company specialises in documentary production and has produced over 150 hours of documentaries for various global and Arab channels, including the BBC, Al Jazeera, and Al Arabi Channel.

Rum Pictures (www.rum-pictures.com) is based in the Jordanian capital, Amman, and was established in 2019. It is the first company in Jordan to specialise exclusively in post-production operations. Rum Pictures has worked on numerous films, dramatic series, and television commercials.

Below is the promotional trailer for the series: