From adorning the walls of cinema halls, film posters have over the decades begun to occupy a place of pride in the homes, offices and private spaces of cinema patrons. While buying poster art of the bygone era is not entirely new, the trend has caught on in a big way, owing to availability and exposure the new generation has to the cinema of yore through digital platforms. While the new age, digitised film posters with airbrushed images ofstars are slick and stylishly designed, the hand-painted posters of the past, with dramatic brush strokes and vibrant colours screaming out loud from the walls they were plastered on, are sorely missed. Now with movies making their way back into cinema halls, BT takes a closer look at the art of film posters and how it continues to be an important part in the journey of a film.

Manoj Desai, one of the oldest names in the film exhibition business, who has spent 50 years running Maratha Mandir and the G7 Single Screens says, “I had never seen a phase like the last two years in my 50-year career when we practically didn’t have posters adorning the outer walls of the theatres. My theatre had opened with Hema Malini’s Seeta Aur Geeta and it bounced back to life with Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Gangubai Kathiawadi. In these five decades, what hasn’t changed is the audience’s love for a great film — something that its poster promises them in one visual. Akshay Kumar, Shah Rukh Khan, Salman Khan or Ajay Devgn, standing with a gun in one hand and his heroine on the side, signifies an action-packed love story even today. It’s the photographic synopsis of a film that attracts the audience even in these times.”

Back in the day, film posters were not designed digitally. Right up to the 1990s, the posters were hand-painted and artistically designed by a rare breed of technicians. M F Husain, in his early years had also designed several movie posters. While current film posters can be accessed at the click of a button, the posters of yesteryear’s cinema have achieved the status of vintage art, especially the hand-painted ones. There are special collectors and restoration teams to keep them in good condition.

In the last two decades, posters of old films with kitschy artwork, loud colours and over-the-top drama have found a place of pride in the homes of thousands of people around the world, including Shah Rukh Khan who reportedly got an original Mughal-E-Azam poster through an online auction, which was later signed by Dilip Kumar. It rests, beautifully framed at his residence, Mannat.

Hinesh Jethwani of Indian Hippy has been working hard since 2009 to ensure that vintage posters of films are restored, shares, “With the overall art market taking a hit, even the poster market saw a slight slump in sales. However, with most of the businesses moving online, we gradually started experiencing a surge in demand for posters, not just from Indian buyers but also from abroad. This was during the first lockdown. What is sad in all of this is that the generation of painters who created these pieces of art are passing away, without anyone taking the baton from them. Studying this art form takes four to five years — these painters were self-taught, and they used rudimentary techniques which are not taught in art schools. These painters captured the raw emotions of the films from their stills and created these visual treats which have become part of memorabilia today. Today, in the name of a poster what you see is an airbrushed image of a star. The rawness is missing. 100 years down the line, people may not have any reference to the art of creating these hand-painted posters, unless someone steps up and takes the baton forward.”

Filmmaker Ramesh Sippy, whose posters of Seeta Aur Geeta and Sholay are among those that are perpetually in demand, believes that with evolving time and changing technology, poster art will survive, albeit in a different form.

He reasons, “Posters played an important role in the journey of a film and they still do. The digital era cannot be ignored. Those days, there was a poster between a film and its audience, but today there’s a lot more in between. Back in the day, it was so important to sit with the painters and create a visual communication using the characters of the film. Like Sholay’s poster evolved from the time it was in the offing to the time it became a hit. Posters were the promise of a story that a film bore for its audience. They were hand-made then; they’re technologically made now. Styles of pursuing an art can always change but posters continue to be art.”

Mumbai’s Chor Bazaar, even in its redevelopment phase, continues to harbour shops that sell vintage posters. Business may not have been as good as it was once upon a time, but the motivation to keep the shops running is admirable and visible in the way the stores have kept the posters in great shape.

Haji Abu, who possesses over three million Hindi and English vintage film posters, arguably one of the largest collections in the country, has a shop inside Mumbai’s Chor Bazaar, which dates back decades. He says, “Films have been made for more than a hundred years now. A poster is always made with each film. The stars of that era actually command a high market value in the poster business. Posters are also sold for the artistic value they carry. Posters of C-grade films are sold for high prices because they look funky and quirky. ”

Rahul Nanda, who is a campaign designer for some of Bollywood’s biggest films, says that creating posters through digital technology has taken over the hand-painted posters of the bygone era. The impact a poster creates for film promotion is just the same even today. He adds, “A poster is the first piece about a film that people react to. Poster art has evolved with the evolution of content. If a movie is brave, the poster will reflect that. Unlike the past decades, a lot of the poster work is digital and downloadable today, which makes this art more accessible to film patrons.”

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