The Over-the-Top Artistry of Ghana’s Painted Movie Posters
An exhibit at the Poster House museum remembers the mobile cinema of 1980s and ’90s Ghana
By Cory Matteson
As part of her preparation for a new exhibition of vintage hand-painted Ghanain movie posters, Poster House chief curator Angelina Lippert scoured eBay to buy video cassette copies of the action and horror flicks that inspired the gloriously extreme interpretations of their box covers. Upon durable flour sacks in brilliant, bold colors, Ghana’s movie poster artists depicted the full potential of Jason Voorhees’ capable blade work or King Kong’s upper body strength. Stars, serpents, demons, coffins, blood, guts, guns and explosions if a movie featured them (or even if they didn’t), Ghanaian posters showcased them with a flair for the dramatic.
With the exhibit, “Baptized by Beefcake: The Golden Age of Hand-painted Movie Posters from Ghana,” which opened in October at the New York City museum, Lippert wants visitors to better understand why.
The 40 posters featured in the exhibit were created out of necessity as a proliferation of video cassette tapes helped create a new cultural opportunity in the impoverished country called the mobile cinema. Imported cassettes shipped to Ghana’s port cities circulated…
