It could be said that since the invention of motion pictures became well-known around the world, many pioneers began to make experiments looking for a way to make that the images captured on film had the same colors as real life. The earliest successful attempt to make a color movie was done by Émile Reynaud in 1892, who decided to hand-color his animated shorts frame by frame. Given that the experiments in color photography at the time weren't giving good results, American inventor William K.L. Dickson decided to use Reynaud's technique of hand-coloring for the Kinetoscope movies he was making for Thomas Alva Edison's company. On those days, Kinetoscope was the most used device to watch movies, and their series of films showing folkloric dances from around the world was very popular, so it would be one of those movies the one that would become the very first color movie in the history of cinema.
"Imperial Japanese Dance" is a short documentary that shows three women performing a Japanese dance, apparently inspired by the 1885 comic opera "The Mikado". In this movie, the three women appear dancing side-by-side while dressed in extremely elaborate costumes that could actually be real traditional dresses from Japan. The dancer in the center twirls a fan, while the other two wave banners as they dance in the traditional style. Given the great beauty of the dancers' dresses, it wasn't a surprise that "Imperial Japanese Dance" was the film chosen to be the first hand-tinted movie by the Edison Studio, as the movie certainly had a powerful visual impact when colored. As usual, the movie was directed by William K.L. Dickson and William Heise, who took special care to make the movie as most visually attractive as possible, carefully placing the three dancers to fit the camera frame.
Sadly, a lot of the impact that "Imperial Japanese Dance" had is lost when the film is seen without the tinting, as the movie looks too dark in black and white, with some elements getting barely visible due to their original colors not being captured on film. While not really an amazing film, it's of high historical importance as it was the first movie featuring real people (in other words, not an animated movie) that was hand-colored. The process of hand-coloring movies would be the only way to make color films in a long time, although due to its difficulty to make it wouldn't be as widely used as many would have liked. Of great interest to those studying Japanese culture, "Imperial Japanese Dance" was another step towards the invention of cinema as we know it. 6/10