Exploring the world of poster designs

Most people here  seem to limit their expectations from a movie poster to the lead actors performing acrobatic dance moves or the heroines in skimpy clothes. However, an exhibition at Gallery Sumukha, Alwarpet, which brings an array of film, theatre and opera posters from the Polish School of Posters, shows that there's a lot more that one can expect from a movie poster.Unlike here and in most other countries, poster designs are an organised art, which formed into a movement between 1890 and 1905, eventually leading to the founding of The Society of Polish Applied Art in 1902. With the founding of the society, the poster designs stuck to the cultural roots of Poland, refraining from the use of foreign symbolism, ideologies and methods.At the exhibition, 30 film, theatre and opera posters adorned the white, well-lit walls of Gallery Sumukha. The poster of the 1972 movie version of Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield is a futuristic representation of the adapted version, with an abstract imagery set in a red background. Designed by Eryk Lipinski, it is a fine example of the poster movement.Surrealism, another characteristic that emerged, strays off the usual Polish folk pattern, although the movement is well-captured in the poster for The Hour-Glass Sanatorium. In bright green and blue hues for a backdrop, a skull with a red eye in the centre peers through the poster, a true embodiment of the interior adventure and unusual tone that the film stands for. Franciszek Starowieyski designed the poster in 1973. Starkly different from this skull poster is the one for the film Black Mask, designed by Weislaw Walkuski. A hollow, skull-like black face with full lips merges with a dull red background, with a bullet mark on the forehead.The poster for Night on Earth, with five tiny yellow cars on a globe, that represents the collection of five stories of five cab drivers in different cities around the world, is worth a dekko. Other stand out poster designs, which have captured the essential symbolic and graphic beauty of the Golden Age of Polish Posters, include Faust and Wozzeck (opera), Hamlet and Macbeth (plays) and Picnic at Hanging Rock (film).The exhibition is on till November 3 at Gallery Sumukha, St Mary's Road, Alwarpet. For details, call 42112545.)