Because the world of poster collecting is SO... ENORMOUS....
Most collectors pick a specialty area to collect.. such as
all the posters by an actor, or director or genre or artist,
etc...
Years ago, it was pretty rare to find posters from
other countries. BUT... the internet has opened up another
area that had been mostly ignored. Whatever area that you
collect, the ability to acquire posters from around the world
has opened up a FANTASTIC new world to collectors.
For collectors that love the artwork, artists such
as Ballester, Belinsky, Brini, Casaro, Chantrell, Ciriello,
Ferrachi, Grinsson, Martinati, Mascii, Nistri, Pulford, and
Soubie have produced some UNBELIEVABLE arwork.....
or the bizarre renditions from Czechoslovakia, East Germany,
Poland or Russia.
For genre collectors, whether its the great crime
posters from Germany, Italy, Japan or the love stories from
France, Greece or Spain, the selections are PHENOMENOL.
Even if you are a collector of a certain actor...
you won't believe how much the International posters can expand
your collection... Sue loves Robert Redford and especially
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. My favorite in her collection
is this Polish version with the unusual artwork showing Redford
and Newman shown here. The US versions seem so...... BORING...
in comparison.
Whether you like small posters because you don't
have a lot of room, (most countries also have small sizes)
OR WHATEVER area that you like, International posters can
usually give you many many hours of new found enjoyment.
OK... Now What!!
Well, if you're wanting to look and
see some of what is out there.. you might want to start with
our archives. Here's a couple of ways to go:
What About Identifying International
Posters
Hopefully, you have already
had the time to look through LAMP-International to see the
the countries that we're compiling information on... BUT what
if you have a poster that you DON'T KNOW where it's FROM!!!!
Let's take a look at
several ways to try to help you identify the country where
a poster was issued. One way is to look at the bottom border
information. Sometimes it can be easily distinguished, such
as: Industria Argentina, printed in Mexico, etc.... OR look
for a printer or lithographer. Quite often there is the city
or country in the address.
Another
way to narrow down which country issued a certain poster is
by size. It may be easy to identify major sizes such as a
British Quad or Japanese B2 poster, but some posters may not
be as easy to identify. We have compiled a International
Poster Size Chart to try to help.
Sometimes it's easy to
identify the country because certain countries have ratings
boxes or censorship stamps on them. For example, New Zealand
doesn't normally issue their own material but use Australian
or US material and place their ratings stamp on them. Some
countries like Canada use a seal, stamp, stick or snipe. We
are working on a Seal and Stamp Section now. We will be connecting
it as soon as possible. For now, you can check the individual
countries.
Sometimes you have to
look for other clues... For example, some posters have catch
phrases on them. When the phrase is about the upcoming release,
it's called an Advance
(or Teaser). These could be like Coming Soon or even just
a date. Other phrases will be longer like... In Theatres This
Fall, etc. US releases will normally use the word 'Theatres
or Theaters' while International releases will use the word
'Cinema' in the phrase instead.
Another way is looking
at the distributor logo. The logos across the bottom of the
poster are VERY important. The logo on the far right on the
bottom is normally the distributor. (Usually the far left
is the production company). The other logos in between can
be other participants, ratings, sound system logos, etc. Look
for International distributors, i.e. all Disney Companies
(Touchstone, Hollywood Pictures, etc.) use Buena Vista which
is their own company. For International releases, they use
Buena Vista INTERNATIONAL...... Sony and Columbia will use
Sony Pictures INTERNATIONAL..... Paramount and Universal own
their own International distribution company called United
International... or UIP. We are working on a section on the
International Distributors... we hope to have it online soon.
Newer poster releases
sometimes include a website where someone can go find out
more about the release. If the studio is releasing the poster,
it quite often has the .com URL, but if it's released by the
distributor, quite often it will have the country code as
the URL extension. This country extension can help identify
the country, such as a release of Spiderman had the extension
'spiderman.cn.kr'. This automatically identifies the country.....
What do you mean you don't know your country extensions?????
OK... for those of you who HAVEN'T MEMORIZED the 250 country
domain extensions, we have compiled them FOR YOU... Look
them over... we will test you on them later
We hope this gives you
some ideas and things to look for when collecting International
Movie Posters and we look forward to providing you more information
in the future.
Please let us know if
this is helpful or any other areas that we may have overlooked.
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