Sunday, February 10, 2008

Ghanaian Film Posters Are Awesome

As movies on VHS made their way to Ghana in the 1980s, entrepreneurs started mobile movie houses with televisions, VCRs, and portable generators. This gave birth to the amazing art of Ghanaian film posters, each individually hand-painted using oil paint on strips of canvas. Check out some side-by-side comparisons of these unique posters with their original North American counterparts - these are some trashy, geeky movies, but there's nothing like an original oil painting to give them a bit of class.


Intriguing takes on Ewoks: The Battle For Endor, Anaconda, and many more after the jump...

As with the above Broken Arrow poster, these painted posters for Anaconda and Scanners 3 cut to the chase and show exactly what people want from these movies, unlike the tame and cryptic America versions.



Sometimes they're more specific reproductions of the North American poster or DVD cover, with a few embellishments.



The color work on this next one is amazing - check out the hands and background splash. The background is particularly Struzan-esque.


For this Nightmare On Elm Street 5 poster, it's interesting to note that the artist used all of the elements from the official poster, the "Shh" pose and the baby carriage, but drastically changed the composition. I don't think I would have known that black thing is supposed to be a baby carriage is without referencing the original poster, but Freddy's face is certainly more terrifying.

All these images were found at Dazed Digital and Ghana Movie Posters. Check em out, lots more fun. And if you're spending some time in Berlin, you can see this posters up close at an art exhibit (Link via CoolHunting).

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