After independence, the new Ghana Film Industry Corporation (taking over the Gold Coast Film Unit) began to actively promote and make films in contention to the biased notions that the West perpetuated about Africa exoticism and primitivism. With the advent of video technology in the 80s and foreign films threatening to flood the markets, the government wrote up a Draft of the National Film and Video Policy for Ghana, encouraging film makers to produce films that solidify the national identity.
Mobile cinemas started up with a new purpose: to reconstruct film as a vessel for entertainment and to serve the public interest, rather than a figurehead for imperialistic ideas. It worked, as Ghana experienced a movie boom from the 1980s into the 90s. Vans were being sent out around the country equipped with nothing more than a generator, a television monitor, a VCR, and a canvas sack acting as a movie poster.
These recycled stitched-together sacks act as a sometimes garish, sometimes crude, but always brutally engaging filter of American pop culture and Ghanian beliefs. Since the artists rarely got to see the film before creating the poster, the result is a deliriously imaginative interpretation of blockbuster hits.
Sometimes the image has nothing to do with the movie, but the images are almost always more intriguing than the movie.
I'm so happy this one made it on the list...
Mobile cinemas started up with a new purpose: to reconstruct film as a vessel for entertainment and to serve the public interest, rather than a figurehead for imperialistic ideas. It worked, as Ghana experienced a movie boom from the 1980s into the 90s. Vans were being sent out around the country equipped with nothing more than a generator, a television monitor, a VCR, and a canvas sack acting as a movie poster.
These recycled stitched-together sacks act as a sometimes garish, sometimes crude, but always brutally engaging filter of American pop culture and Ghanian beliefs. Since the artists rarely got to see the film before creating the poster, the result is a deliriously imaginative interpretation of blockbuster hits.
Sometimes the image has nothing to do with the movie, but the images are almost always more intriguing than the movie.
I'm so happy this one made it on the list...
All images come from "Extreme Canvas," Ernie Wolf. Found at the Miami Public Library
Information from Brigit Meyer's paper "Ghanian Popular Cinema and the Magic in and of Film."
