If you’re not familiar with the phenomenon of movie posters from Ghana, do yourself a favour and do a Google images search. You won’t be disappointed. Along with many other cinema geeks, I’m obsessed with Ghanaian movie posters. They tread a fine line between works of genius and works of idiotic madness. And never do they fail to entertain.
A short history from GhanaMoviePosters.com:
With the arrival of video and video cassettes during 1980s In Ghana (West Africa) a small-scale film distribution mobile Cinema was created.
The small size mobile cinema operators were equipped with a television, a video and sometimes with a small portable generator and were moving from town to town from village to village operating and showing their films! (During the day inside social clubs or houses and during the night in the open air). In order to attract more customers and in order to advertise their mission and business the need of huge posters was created and born! Talented artists after viewing the film created large size posters using oil paint on canvas!
The artist had the freedom to add or change scenes seen or not seen in the film in order to make the poster more attractive! (This is the reason that this hand painted posters are more interesting as ART than normal posters since each of these hand painted posters are UNIQUE!)
Because of the posters “hard” life, most of the surviving posters have damage at the end of the canvas, peelings, cracking and other damages.
Below is one of my favourites, I give you the Ghanaian poster for The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)…
