In the 1950s, Egypt’s cinema industry was the third largest in the world. Dubbed as ‘the Golden Age’ of cinema, films that came out of prominent Egyptian writers and directors were seen worldwide, offering an Egyptian twist to the famous Hollywood and European films. In that era, film posters were a serious business. Instead of depending on graphic design and professional cameras, artists used their imagination and creative skill to paint the poster by hand. Artists like Hassan Mahzar Gassour and Stamatis Vassiliou were keen on using symbolic imagery, flashes of colour, dramatic facial expressions, and humour – brilliantly depicting the world of Egyptian cinema through art. Today, these posters are now considered as cultural artefacts. In 2013, an exhibition in the Main Gallery of the Princeton University Library in the USA, “Egyptian Film Poster Designers and the Print Shops of Hassan Mazhar Gassour & Sayed Ali Ibrahim al-Nasr” was held to honour the incredible artwork of these posters. Similarly, in the basement of an old building in Beirut, CNN went to see Abboudi Abou Jaoude who set up an official archive of 20,000 vintage Arab movie posters to preserve…
