Pune: National Film Archive of India (NFAI) has acquired about 2,500 film posters. The collection includes about 1,500 Hindi film posters, in addition to a number of Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam ones.
These posters range from 1942 till recent times. The collection showcases the evolution of film publicity, covering various techniques of poster making. The posters are of 20x30 and 30x40 dimensions.
Hindi films like Roti (1942), Sher-e-Baghdad (1946), Anmol Ghadi (1946), Atom Bomb (1947), Stunt Queen (1947), Pugree (1948), Sant Namdev (1949), Apna Desh (1949), Veer Ghatoktach (1949), Deedar (1951), Alam Ara (1956), Dilli Ka Thug (1958), Phagun (1958), Manzil (1960), Razia Sultana (1961) etc are also a part of this collection.
The fresh acquisition also includes posters featuring Fearless Nadia, for the films Sher-e-Baghdad (1946), Stunt Queen (1947), 11 o’clock (1948) and Shamsherbaaz (1953). There are numerous posters featuring Dilip Kumar, Madhubala, Raj Kapoor, Meena Kumari, Guru Dutt, Nargis, Shammi Kapoor, Dev Anand, Mumtaz, Dharmendra, Dara Singh and many more.
“This has been a significant addition to NFAI’s ever growing collection of film-related material. We appeal to all film lovers to come forward and provide films and film-related material so that it can be preserved for future generations,” said Prakash Magdum, Director of NFAI.
Poster highlights
- Rare 6-sheet poster of Mughal-e-Azam (1960) in 10 ft x 5 ft, an offset print of a hand-painted poster.
- 90 posters of Amitabh Bachchan’s films, including one of his earliest films Sanjog (1971) and his unreleased film Zamaanat.
- Posters of mythological and historical films such as Sampoorna Ramayan (1961), Shree Ganesh (1962), Veer Abhimanyu (1965), Shankar Sati Anusuya (1965), Veer Bhimsen (1964), Laxmi Narayan (1951), Balram Srikrishna (1968).
- Over 120 wall posters of Tamil films, 150 recent films and 600 South Indian language films (mainly Kannada and Telugu).
