Tuesday, September 23, 2008

Polish Movie Poster Art

I am not polish and I am not at all well versed in the in's and out's of Polish art and design, so bear with me and I hope I won't interpret these incorrectly. The other day I ran across WellMedicated.com, "50 Incredible Film Posters from Poland" and I was flawed.



What I grew up with and what the polish did are so greatly different it messed with (eg. Alien) my child hood memories. The polish interpreted them in bizarre and facinating ways. As you can see for yourselves, left is polish, right is western. I was inspired to learn more and wondered how they came into being?



From what I have learnt (not much out there) Polish film posters were developed out of circumstance. After World War II, Poland turned into a totalitarian dictatorship, a soviet state. The economy tumbled and graphic artists, including well known ones, had to work for the state. Unlike other soviet block countries, Poland was still able to watch US/European movies, but under state owned controlled means. When it came to movie advertising, ie posters, the standard genre imposing, name driven and big heads approach was not imposed. This is because the state wasn't under any legal authority from the west and could be completely ignored.



In a strange way, the lack of legal control and being forced to work for the state conspired to create a free environment for graphic artists. But due to the WWII and living in a soviet block they created posters that were often times deeply psychologically, dark, complex and in some cases tragic. While also exploring the meaning and approach of what makes a poster, a poster. This backwards freedom caused them to create truly original pieces of art.



It's interesting, when you look at a movie poster you understand everything in 5 seconds or less. But you can't say that about these. These posters can be viewed over and over again and you can derive multiple meanings from them. That's probably why many authors can't pin point why they are the way they are. This is wear I could be misinterpreting them myself. But after really thinking about these for a while I've come to believe that the artists understood the meaning of limitation. Through graphic design they were attempting to tap into the fundamental questions of why am I here, what am I doing and what do I want to say. Something we are all trying to figure out.



To see more go to CinemaPoster.com. It's not easy to navigate but has many more posters and talks more about what happned to the Polish poster in the 80s though to today.



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