Moving Pictures Painted - 200 Posters From The Golden Age of Egyptian Cinema

It’s Nice That featured a new book titled Moving Pictures Painted. Published by CentreCentre, it includes 200 Egyptian film posters made between 1938 and 1996 and 3 essays by film critic/programmer Joseph Fahim, artist, designer, scholar Haytham Nawar and art historian and scholar Christiane Gruber. 

Needless to say, I hit the order button right away (you can order it from here) and can’t wait to receive my copy.

CentreCentre’s founder Patrick Fry discusses the book in It’s Nice That,

“The project all started with a conversation between myself and a poster collector named Thomas Hill, who has an archive of around 100,000 posters,” says Patrick Fry, CentreCentre’s founder. The more time Patrick spent with Thomas’ collection, the more he began to admire the skill and style of the artists behind the posters from Egypt. “This is far from a collection of foreign curiosities, they are highly accomplished masterful posters,” Thomas says. “I feel they deserve to be seen and celebrated.”

“Ultimately it was a balancing act between a visually exciting collection and one that had rigour and respect for its context. The collection had to primarily represent Egyptian cinema, not Hollywood, but as this book would hopefully help spread the word about this wonderful tradition, I felt that the Egyptian translation of the Hollywood poster style could become a segue for Western audiences.”

Read the complete article here.

Here are some images of the book from CentreCentre:

About the book:

As Egypt honed its distinctive style of movie-making in the early 20th century, an alchemy of cultural specificities and legal idiosyncrasies saw the development of a parallel craft that took on a life of its own: film posters. Made largely with stone litho printing and conceived by illustrators who worked independently from the production studios, Egyptian cinema’s poster culture generated an ecosystem of creativity that rivalled the movies themselves.

Variously melodramatic and minimalist, reflecting eras of liberation and conservatism alike, the posters were displayed on billboards in thrumming metropolises like Cairo and Alexandria during their heyday, as well as on a smaller scale outside local theatres. Showcasing established film stars and catapulting new faces to fame, the posters allowed Egyptian artists and illustrators to absorb an international scene while cementing their own visual languages. Joining a global conversation yet remaining unmistakably Egyptian in sensibility and aesthetic, posters from the industry’s golden age acted as a weathervane for the country’s mood and culture. Featuring more than 200 examples, alongside analysis from film historians and academic specialists, Moving Pictures Painted reprises one of cinema’s most singular – and most spectacular – eras, in Egypt or anywhere else.

https://centrecentre.co.uk/collections/frontpage/products/moving-pictures-painted