THE COLOUR OF INK
A FILM BY BRIAN D. JOHNSON
2022 - 105 MINUTES - DOCUMENTARY - ENGLISH, SPANISH, JAPANESE WITH ENGLISH SUBTITLES
EXECUTIVE PRODUCER RON MANN
A SPHINX PRODUCTIONS AND NFB CO-PRODUCTION
The Colour of Ink will Premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival 2022
Ink is our primal medium. It has always been with us, inscribing the evolution of humanity. The Colour of Ink uncovers the medium’s mystery and power through the eyes of Jason Logan, a visionary Toronto inkmaker. Working with ingredients foraged in the wild—weeds, berries, bark, flowers, rocks, rust—he makes ink from just about anything. Jason sends custom-made inks to an eclectic range of artists around the world, from a New Yorker cartoonist to a Japanese calligrapher. As the inks take on a life of their own, his playful alchemy paints a story of colour that reconnects us to the earth and returns us to a childlike sense of wonder.
Filmed in seven countries, the film is a global field trip that has Jason sourcing materials from landscapes ranging from the wildfire-charred hills of Malibu to a white-marble quarry in Tuscany.
Like a winemaker or chef, he draws an organic narrative from terroir. His ink becomes a liquid conduit of memory, telling the story of the place it comes from. When he meets Margaret Atwood at Toronto’s Wycliffe College, he presents her with a “Handmaid Red” ink containing brick dust collected from the walls of its courtyard—which had served as a location for The Handmaid’s Tale series based on her novel.
The film celebrates the timeless tradition of the ink-written word. A master calligrapher’s nib creates choreography on the page as it dances to the swooping rhythms of Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue.
And Atwood—doodling with quill, fountain pen and brush—makes a convincing case that the hand-eye ritual of making notes manually inscribes them in the brain more permanently than a digital keyboard.
The Colour of Ink frames Jason’s odyssey with the story of ink’s arcane origins as a substance that has been brewed with everything from bones to blood, oak galls to insects. From its earliest uses in ritual tattooing, ink evolved as a medium of both communication and healing. And as Jason ponders its medicinal properties, he creates a bespoke ink for Japanese American painter Yuri Shimojo after she’s diagnosed with cancer—using Prussian Blue, a pigment used in cancer treatment.
The film taps into a growing movement to revive analog media and natural colour. But it’s not just a nostalgia trip. In a digital age where the line between truth and lies has become so slippery, there’s a craving for ink’s indelible substance, and for the tangible connection of handmade language. Over the long arc of civilization, ink remains our most enduring record, a fossil of human consciousness. And in its quick gleam, we discover the magic of a medium that still binds us like nothing else—an imprint of authenticity in the ether of zeroes and ones.