Bollywood Posters from Pre — Digital Era till Today

The art of poster making for promotional purposes dates back to almost 70 years in the history of Indian film industry. Have you ever imagined how film publicity materials such as banners and posters were produced before the introduction of the printing technology in India?

Stay tuned to take a journey into the history of poster making in Indian cinema. Posters made for movies in the 1920s till the 1980s were hand painted. Hence they are obviously of great value to collectors and film enthusiasts. These posters were a successful tool for fascinating the west and making Indian film industry the love of the east.

Timeline of Bollywood Posters

It was the time between the 1920s to the 1990s when Bollywood had nurtured its own unique language in the form of Bollywood posters. This form of visual art had a strong impact on viewers. Some of the most magnificent posters have been meticulously preserved by online galleries and art museums. Many authors have also written books on the rarity and graciousness of handmade film posters and how they got their contemporary shape over the years.

The original hand make posters are very unique and have great monetary as well as sentimental value as compared to reprints, regional variations and re-release posters. Authentic poster artists used to paint large Bollywood movie posters sing their imagination and without any use of technical printing tools. The Bollywood film posters were way more varied and diverse as compared to the Hollywood posters where each poster was a mere replica of the original print.

However the variations in the Bollywood posters account to the work of several different poster artists who painted their own version of movie posters using the original publicity still issued by the film maker. Hence there were dozens of different versions of a single movie poster in India in the pre-digital era.

Bollywood movie posters have mirrored the types of films that were produced in the respective era when they were produced. For instance the 1970s was the time for masala movies in the Hindi film industry. The posters of this era depicted the same over-crowded spicy framework of the movies of the time.

There are also regional differences in poster making. For instance the vintage Bollywood cinema posters used for publicity in South Indian states had bright lips and colours smothered across the faces of artists. However in the 1980s the commercial cinema moved forward from hand painted posters to photographic images.