Bizarre Movie Posters From Africa That Are So Bad, They’re Good
Updated: Apr 15
In the 1980s and 1990s, African artists were commissioned to create Hollywood movie posters that aimed to exude maximum excitement, often disregarding the actual plot of the films. Complicating matters further, these artists frequently had to craft promotional material for movies they hadn't even watched. Their primary objective was to drive ticket sales, meaning that if a film was described as gory, the corresponding poster had to be equally gruesome, featuring imagery such as skulls, blood, dripping blood, crushed skulls, and more.
Arguably most of these hand-painted posters were produced in Ghana. "World cinema is a lingua franca we all understand," Los Angeles Ernie Wolfe art dealer and collector told The Atlantic. He first noted these unusual cinema advertisements while travelling in the country in 1990. "These posters appeal to people because [they] invite this really incredible dialogue—a comparison between what you know of a film and how the painter imagined it. And they’re also just really good art."
During the military dictatorships of the 1970s and '80s, stringent laws prevented the importation of large-scale offset printing presses, commonly used for poster production worldwide. Consequently, Ghanaians continued to craft movie posters and signage by hand well into the 1990s.
The only constraint was the size of the canvas, which had to fit on one side of a 50kg flour bag or two sides stitched together. Beyond this limitation, there were no boundaries.
However, with shifts in political dynamics and advancements in technology, handmade posters gradually fell out of use. That is until art collectors from the West began to take an interest. Today, rare vintage pieces fetch prices as high as $15,000. With the advent of a new global market, local artists have revived the tradition of creating these posters once again.
