The poster painters of lahori cinema
// November 13th, 2004 // All
They may be unrelentingly kitschy, gaudy and even borderlingly grotesque, but what you can never call them is inartistic.
“I LOVE YOU Babby”
The ubiquitous painted cinema poster that has been such a powerful representative of south asian cinema around the world has faced secular decline for years now. As the even more garish work of underground Photoshop gurus takes there place on the Nishats and the Capris- even accomplishied painters have been fettered to the yoke of endless Honda civic and Habib Bank home finance loan adverts. Less human, more automaton.
I had some experience with this because I went around looking for somebody to paint a poster for me in Lahore this year-and cinema after cinema had either done away with there resident crew of painters or had converted there facilities for use in commercial advertisement painting.
One of the more enterprising ones had retained there staff and ran a turn-key cheating ‘outsourcing’ operation for art college students-I didn’t linger to find out the mechanics of that though.
Source : Corbis [This one is probably from Peshawar]
I did however, finally manage to find somebody who painted the poster for me-and I happily parted with my pocket money to commission a 6’ X 5’ oil on canvas. Mine is a slightly modded Maula Jatt-complete with blindingly neon colors and an all-singing-all-dancing, decidedly gung-ho perspective on violence and brutality-but alas, no nautch girls.
Until I get down to photographing this masterpiece, whet your appetite on these.
Source : http://www.mango.itgo.com/lahore_main.htm
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