During the 1980s and 1990s, Ghanaian artists created vibrant hand-painted movie posters to promote Hollywood blockbuster films. These posters served as promotional material for mobile cinemas that ...

“They’re not just film posters – they’re 2m-high, one-off, original oil paintings,” says Karun Thakar, the collector and curator behind African Gaze, an exhibition showcasing film ...

as well as West African films. To attract viewers, the video clubs needed to advertise their offerings. But they did not have the original movie posters, or the means to print alternatives – the ...

When Frank Armah began painting posters for Ghanaian movie theaters in the mid-1980s, he was given a clear mandate: Sell as many tickets as possible. If the movie was gory, the poster should be ...

We’ve previously expressed our love for the hand-painted mobile cinema posters of Ghana, many of which took extreme creative liberties with films’ plots. For example, who knew that Cujo was an ...

Surreal or disturbing imagery is a key feature of these posters, advertising Ghanaian movie screenings from the 1980s and ’90s. Another is their eye-popping use of color, which built on a ...

But necessity is the mother of invention, a truism that, in Ghana, resulted in some of the most inventive movie posters ever. Staring in the 1980s, in remote Ghanaian villages, films circulated ...

Mobile cinema businesses became wildly popular in Ghana in the 1980s and 1990s. As a way to attract viewers, proprietors commissioned local artists to paint film posters with creative license.

Chicago) in West Town to showcase his massive stockpile of weirdo movie posters from Ghana. In the 80s, Ghanaian mobile cinemas showed movies in villages that didn’t have electricity.

“They’re not just film posters – they’re 2m-high, one-off, original oil paintings,” says Karun Thakar, the collector and curator behind African Gaze, an exhibition showcasing film ...