Sunday, November 8, 2009

super fly (poster) guy.

Found these on my (internet-based) travels and had to share (a wee bit like I would if I had crabs).

Pay attention, here's the history part.

In the dim and distant 1980's the uprise in video cassette technology gave birth (not literally in a kind of David Cronenberg way - that would be sick) to the mobile cinema phenomena in the West African country of Ghana.

These touring cinema's (
usually created by hooking up a TV and VCR to a portable generator) would travel from village to village using large barns or even tents as temporary venues.

In order to promote these showings, local artists were hired to create large advertising posters of the films. These were usually painted on used canvas flour sacks with the artists working from very little - and in some cases no - reference materials at all meaning that they often added elements of their own baring no relation to the actual movie.

The mobile cinema craze sadly began to decline in the mid-nineties with the greater availability of television and video to the countries populace and, as a result the groovy painted film posters were replaced with shoddily photocopied versions of the actual covers and advertising artwork.

So here, for your enjoyment are a few examples from that bygone age.

Enjoy!



















I shall stop now before anyone begins to mistake this for one of those 'proper' film blogs with well researched posts etc. I mean, I'd hate you to come away from here thinking you'd learned something.

No comments: