- Hezbollah battles troops on border as Israel pounds Lebanon
- Alcaraz, Sinner breeze into third round of Shanghai Masters
- Bagnaia wins Japan MotoGP sprint to cut Martin's lead
- Alcaraz breezes into third round of Shanghai Masters
- Gaza cultural heritage brought to light in Geneva
- 'Bullet for democracy': Trump returns to site of rally shooting
- Italy targets climate activists in 'anti-Gandhi' demo clampdown
- South Korean cult-horror series 'Hellbound' returns at BIFF
- Nepalis fear more floods as climate change melts glaciers
- Honduras arrests environmentalist's alleged murderer
- Padres pitcher Musgrove needs elbow surgery
- Supreme Court lets stand rules to curb mercury, methane emissions
- Boston beat Denver in NBA exhibition season opener, but Jokic says omens are good
- Chagos diaspora angry at lack of input on islands' fate
- Biden says 'not confident' of peaceful US election
- US trade chief defends tariff hikes when paired with investment
- Lukaku stars as Napoli beat Como to hold Serie A top spot
- Ohtani set for MLB playoff debut as Dodgers face Padres
- Pogba's drug ban cut to 18 months from four years
- Devine leads New Zealand to big win over India in Women's T20 World Cup
- Bosnia floods kill 16 people
- EU court blocks French ban on vegetable 'steak' labelling
- Prosecutors seek dismissal of rape charges against French rugby players
- Meta AI turns pictures into videos with sound
- Bolivia's Morales says claims he raped a minor are a 'lie'
- MLB Reds hire two-time champion Francona as manager
- Daniel Maldini receives first Italy call-up for Nations League
- US dockworkers return to ports after three-day strike
- Ancelotti points finger at Madrid's 'lack of intensity'
- Haiti reeling after 70 killed in gang attack
- Five Czech kids in hospital over TikTok 'piercing challenge'
- What happens next in Iran-Israel conflict?
- Country star Garth Brooks denies rape accusations
- Stubbs hits maiden century as South Africa make 343-4 against Ireland
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- Odegaard injury has forced Arsenal to be 'different', says Arteta
- Ratcliffe refuses to guarantee Ten Hag's Man Utd future
- Meta must limit data use for targeted ads: EU court
- Mauritius to hold legislative election on November 10
- Britain qualify for America's Cup final after 60-year wait
- IMF asks Sri Lanka to protect hard-won gains
- Morata returns to Spain Nations League squad after injury
- Irish regulator to probe Ryanair use of facial recognition
- Public allowed to see video evidence in France mass rape trial
- US hiring soars past expectations in sign of resilient market
- Under-fire Ten Hag 'together' with Man Utd hierarchy
- Guardiola talks of Man City love affair as financial hearing rumbles on
- De Bruyne out of Belgium Nations League squad
- Japanese trainer Yahagi hopes Shin Emperor achieves 50-year-old Arc dream
- UK's Starmer hails 'landmark' carbon capture funding
How black-and-white became Hollywood's favorite new color
Black-and-white is the hot new trend in Hollywood, where directors of Oscars-contending films such as "Belfast" and "The Tragedy of Macbeth" are embracing monochrome for its storytelling power.
Kenneth Branagh's childhood drama and Joel Coen's Shakespeare adaptation are among a batch of recent acclaimed movies shot either entirely or mainly without color, as filmmakers seek to tap into the medium's inherent sense of historical authenticity and humanizing intimacy.
"Color allows you brilliantly to describe people, but black-and-white allows you to feel people," Branagh said of his deeply personal drama about violence in 1960s Northern Ireland, which is up for seven Oscars on Sunday including best picture.
While a "sweeping landscape of a desert or a mountain range" can be made epic by color, "an epic dimension of black-and-white photography, on a massive screen, is the human face."
The choice "makes for a poetic dimension to things that can otherwise seem a little banal," he told AFP.
Meanwhile, "Tragedy of Macbeth" cinematographer Bruno Delbonnel told The New York Times the effect was "meant to bring theatricality" and give the film a timeless quality. Its star Denzel Washington is in the running for best actor.
Monochrome movies have of course continued to exist since they fell out of mainstream favor during the 1950s, when cheaper color technology enabled more directors to emulate the bright tones that had dazzled audiences years earlier in "The Wizard of Oz" and "Gone with the Wind."
In 2012, "The Artist" -- a film that was not just black-and-white but also silent -- won best picture at the Oscars, while the likes of "Roma" and "Mank" have won Oscars for best cinematography more recently.
But this year's colorless contingent has grown.
"We all got together... it was a DGA [Directors Guild of America] meeting," joked Mike Mills, whose family drama "C'mon C'mon" starring Joaquin Phoenix also comes in grayscale, and was nominated at this month's BAFTAs.
"I love black-and-white. I'm super pretentious. I watch a lot of black-and-white films -- they're my heroes' films, right? I just adore them," Mills told AFP.
In "Passing" -- whose star Ruth Negga has been nominated for a batch of awards, winning at the Film Independent Spirit Awards earlier this month -- the format is used to tackle the issue of racism.
Rebecca Hall's directorial debut explores "racial passing," as two childhood friends of mixed racial heritage have a chance encounter in 1920s New York while both are pretending to be white.
"It wasn't just a stylistic choice. I felt that it was a conceptual choice -- to make a film about colorism... that drains the color out of it," Hall said at its Sundance film festival premiere.
"We look at faces, and then we immediately put them into these categorizations... the categorizations become important, but they are also in some senses absurd.
"Nobody is actually black-and-white. Film isn't black-and-white. It's gray."
- 'Crazy abstraction' -
So, why are directors getting on the black-and-white bandwagon now? Is it simply a coincidence?
Experts have pointed to broader trends such as the rise of Instagram and social media, that may explain why audiences -- which in recent times may have seen black-and-white films as "old-fashioned" or "boring" -- are now more willing to give it a go.
"Most Americans have become their own filmmakers and photographers with the ability to slap a filter onto an image and render it in grayscale or sepia or heightened color," wrote Alissa Wilkinson, who covers film and culture for Vox.
"Getting used to seeing color-adjusted images, including black-and-white videos and photos, could make us associate them with the past less. Instead of being bound by history and time, we start to see them as simply aesthetic choices."
The idea that black-and-white is a choice to deliberately look less real than the color-filled world we actually live in has been embraced by several of this year's efforts.
"Black-and-white is such a crazy abstraction, so does a great sort of magic trick on the viewer," said Mills. "'I'm not in the real world anymore. I'm a little kicked off into a story, into art.'"
And there was a more specific reason for his choice in "C'mon C'mon," a movie about an absent uncle -- played by Phoenix -- bonding with his precocious nephew.
"I have this really cute kid -- black-and-white helped just take the cute sting off of it."
V.Fontes--PC