Now Reading: IRS officer’s vintage Bollywood posters trace cinema history in Lucknow show
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IRS officer’s vintage Bollywood posters trace cinema history in Lucknow show
IRS officer’s vintage Bollywood posters trace cinema history in Lucknow show
An Indian Revenue Services officer's personal collection of vintage cinema posters, spanning from the late 1930s to the present, is on display at the Bioscope: Caravan Guzar Gaya exhibition in Lucknow's Kokoro…
An Indian Revenue Services officer's personal collection of vintage cinema posters, spanning from the late 1930s to the present, is on display at the Bioscope: Caravan Guzar Gaya exhibition in Lucknow's Kokoro Art Gallery. Suboor Usmani has gathered rare hand-painted originals including Pukar (1939), Ram Rajya (1943), Aan (1952) and Mughal-e-Azam (1960).
Usmani, a former Mastermind India winner, attaches trivia to each poster: Ram Rajya (1943) was the only film Mahatma Gandhi ever watched, and Usmani acquired a damaged copy free with a Don (1978) purchase at a Mumbai antique shop. The show also highlights lesser-known facts, such as Nirupa Roy playing Razia Sultan in a 1961 film before the better-known 1983 version.
Curator Vandana Sehgal said the collection documents how posters evolved from hand-painted labour to digital prints. The free exhibition, inaugurated by former bureaucrat Navneet Sehgal and Lucknow Film Forum founder Renuka Tandon, runs until August 20.
Indian Opinion Analysis
An IRS officer's private collection, built over years at antique shops and flea markets, now serves as an informal archive of Indian cinema's visual history. Hand-painted posters, a craft that employed thousands before digital printing, are themselves vanishing artefacts, making each surviving piece a document of both film and labour history. The Lucknow exhibition runs for two more days, whether such ephemera will find a permanent institutional home, or remain dependent on individual collectors, is an open question for cultural preservation in India.
Source: hindustantimes.com
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