Species date unknown

The tradition of hand-painted movie posters emerged in Ghana in the 1980s when VHS tapes entered the market, giving rise to mobile cinemas and film clubs. For these distributors, printed posters were often too costly to produce, so they hired local sign painters to illustrate personal interpretations of the film onto recycled flour sacks. Since then, a distinctive style has come to define the painted Ghanaian film poster — bold colour, rippling musculature, airbrushed contours and surreal compositions.

These six examples (Rhythm of the Gods 2; Species; Operation Scorpio; My Father's Love 2; Vampire Hunters; and A Chinese Ghost Story) were likely displayed outside video stores in the late 1990s or early 2000s. The banners are painted in a highly graphic, illustrative style which cites the photographic montages routinely produced for big-budget mainstream films, with the artists giving equal treatment to Hollywood blockbusters, like 1995’s Species, and small budget Nigerian features like My Father’s Love 2. The blend of cultural references in these works speaks to the balance of local and global resonance that characterised West African film culture at the turn of the twenty-first century.