Long before the Internet and TV promos appeared on the scene, posters were the only authentic and credible source of information. Producers hired locals to advertise films using elementary technology. They mounted hoardings on bullock-carts and rickshaws and used loudspeakers to lure people. They also carried hand-drawn posters that they liberally distributed.

These posters were exquisite drawings by painters. Although the films may have been produced in black and white, posters were painted in original colours. Such was the skill of these artists that they could capture the essence of a film in one image. Among them were those who specialised in mythological films, others in social or action films; each an expert in his own respective line of work.

With a change in the instruments of publicity, these hand-made posters slowly became a thing of the past, but the rich legacy that they left behind still lingers on.

Priya Paul, a Delhi-based curator is one of the very few connoisseurs of this atypical art form, who has been tirelessly collecting rare film posters for years. Today she has perhaps the largest collection and also extraordinary photographs of film personalities from a bygone era.

Her compilation is far-reaching. She is the proud possessor of the only poster of Alam Ara, the first talkie-film ever made in India. She also has black and white photographs of actresses like Nutan, Geeta Bali, Johnny Walker and Nimmi shot in the late 1950s and 60s. Her collection includes pictures of shootings and sets of super-hit movies like Mughal-E-Azam, Kavi Kalidas, Deedar and Hatimtai.
 

Priya recently held an exhibition of her rare collection in Delhi in association with Apparao Galleries of Chennai. The display included film posters, paintings made by eminent artists on themes related to cinema and even digitally morphed stills of films like Sholay and Barsaat.

Titled Cinema Still, the exhibition was perhaps the first show of such a large number of uncommon posters and photographs related to Indian cinema. It not only spanned years, it cut across different language mediums by incorporating posters and screen-images from Bangla, Marathi, Tamil and Telegu films.

Says, curator Priya Paul, " Collecting rare posters of old films has been my hobby since childhood. For me they are not just mere posters. They are a legacy of our glorious past, when films meant much more than just entertainment---they were a way of life. And posters were the most visible signs of a forthcoming film."
 

The relationship between movies and paintings has always been a profound one. In the golden years of cinema, the original purpose of the poster was to serve as a window, which afforded a pictorial insight into the film’s thoughts. Over the years it has undergone a definitive change.

Traditional posters and canvases have been dismantled and replaced with the flickering images of TV and more recently the bits and bytes of the Internet offering new possibilities of image representation.

The exhibition underscored the overpowering influence of cinema on art and brought forth nostalgic memories of an era gone by. The fearsome Gabbar Singh pacing the mountainside in Sholay. The eternal Indian woman of Mother India, a publicity still of Oonche Log and many more which all went to create a new gallery of old icons.

Priya Paul’s collection also included Vivan Sundaram’s forays into digital photography, Sheba Chhachi’s disturbing images of screen violence projecting Hrithik Roshan in Fiza and Mission Kashmir. Then there was Dayanita Singh’s series, titled Masterji that unravelled the making of fantasy through the eyes of the dance directors of the Hindi film industry. There were pictures depicting Saroj Khan teaching dance steps to a star.

Aparna Caur’s painting, Pyar Hua reclaimed the most cherished moments in Indian cinematic history - the rain scene from the film Awara with Raj Kapoor and Nargis frozen in time under an umbrella.

The renowned Tamil artist Armugham who is also considered the best hoarding painter, immortalised Rajnikanth in his most popular film avatars.

Photographs and paintings were consciously used to create the social context in Indian cinema. Influential filmmakers like Dadashaeb Phalke, V. Shantaram and Satyajit Ray had an early training in art and used this with great mastery in their cinema. Their films interfaced art and cinema and used the art frame to represent relationships.

For example, Dadasaheb Phalke, who was a product of the J.J. School Of Art and Kala Bhavana in Baroda was a keen landscape painter. For his Raja Harischandra, India’s first fully indigenous feature film he worked at Raja Ravi Verma’s press where he made photo-litho transfers. Films later, he set up his own printing press, the Phalke Art Printing and Engraving Works.

During the British Raj, in an environment of bondage, nationalistic sentiments had to be conveyed cleverly and without offending the rulers. It became hugely popular with the audience till the British began curbing the screening. However, posters of such films continued to be used as symbols of a defiant nation and sneakily spread a sense of self-determination among the public.

Posters depicting social protest movements were heavily exploited as tools for propaganda and the image of Mother India as the young and virginal Goddess, needing the support of her children in repulsing the imperialist powers, was used to build popular sentiment. Film posters thus added as much value to social capital building in the pre-independence days as in publicising the film and attracting the cinemagoers.

It was art directors who however, continued with the tradition of using frames as means of creating the backdrop. Showman Raj Kapoor began his life at the R.K. Films as an art director, before making his rendezvous with acting and direction. The Calcutta film industry gave cinema art its due recognition when Satyajit Ray himself sketched out all the set design and characters before casting for the right actors to suit the roles.
 

In Suchitra Sen’s film Mamta, director Asit Sen frequently framed the dramatic story against abstract paintings by Indian modernists. Raj Kumar Santoshi’s heroine in Damini and her spirited struggle to seek justice for her sexually abused maid by her own brothers-in-law is frequently framed against a Tayeb Mehta’s work. More recently in the film Dil Chahta Hai, Akshay Khanna is shown as an abstract artist.

Cinema Art has been used extensively to explore movie themes by Indian film makers through etchings, portraits, photographs and backdrops. With digital imagery replacing the artist in today’s rapidly evolving technology, and electronic prints taking the place of posters, the art director no longer needs to depend on his own drawing expertise to sketch the scenes frame by frame.

Painters of posters have faded away just as their paintings have vanished in a world dominated by computers and mouse pads. It is only through the collections of people like Priya Paul that one can hope to keep that connection with the past.