A los de GHANA no les gana nadie...
Before movie posters were glossy, Photoshopped creations featuring recycled tropes of giant heads floating in negative space and text superimposed over faces, they were hand-painted objets d’art. If you’re a movie buff, you know this—from the minimal hard lines of Saul Bass to the avant-garde imagery of Czech posters, designers once had an enviable imagination and the visual storytelling chops to entice a movie-going audience. Which is why the Bowers Museum’s current exhibit “Reel Art” is so incredible; focusing on obscure 1990s-era film posters from Ghana, the collection’s outlandish, campy brilliance reminds us of the exciting adventures audiences hope to experience, only filtered through an outrageous painting style.
The title “Reel Art” refers to a film reel as well as the hope these posters will be recognized as real art, which at that point was limited to fine sculptures and carvings. They are artifacts of the so-called golden age of Ghana’s movie poster art that happened during the booming video-club craze from the mid-’80s to the new millennium and were created with oil paint by town muralists on 50-kilo sacks of flour. Promising excitement, intrigue and drama, these posters reflect the artists’ interpretations of the films’ subject matters and dive deep into the fantastical with ninjas, gangsters, supernatural beings and monsters. Artists such as Joe Mensah—considered the pioneer of the form and who taught others like him—Socrates, Jones, Sowwy, King, Samuel Art and others originated this wave of stylistic art that was both functional and graphically engaging, shaping the medium for generations after them.
According to the exhibit’s notes and to Ghanaian movie-poster expert Ernie Wolfe III, the posters were central to the country’s up-and-coming mobile video-rental system, in which traveling salesmen trekked to small villages throughout Ghana and Kenya to rent out VHS tapes and TV/sound equipment and screen local movie marathons of A- to Z-grade genre flicks starring big names such as Bruce Lee, Jean-Claude Van Damme and Arnold Schwarzenegger and their low-budget counterparts such as Lorenzo Lamas, Billy Blanks and Cynthia Rothrock. Whatever the film was about, discerning viewers would base their decision to rent a film on their fascination with the poster art.
Te lleva a upa con 73 pirulos: Bela Lugosi en Bride of the Monster, 1955.
Béla Lugosi murió el 16 de agosto de 1956 en Los Ángeles de un ataque cardíaco, mientras leía algo sin mucho interés, sentado en una silla. Tenía 73 años.
Hitchcock a la italiana: Dial M for Murder en Italia y Bélgica, 1954.
Enlaces:
https://www.ocweekly.com/the-bowers-museum-honors-ghanas-outlandish-cinema-poster-art-8100869/
https://twitter.com/UnTopo73/status/1336079237271457800
https://twitter.com/UnTopo73/status/1336079834175377412
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Publicado originalmente en: http://www.foroaudioyvideo.com/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=11425
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