IN an attempt to entice reluctant film fans,posters advertising new Egyptian movies depict half-naked actresses, gym-honed actors baring their chests …quot; and political slogans. Thousands of teenagers have recently swarmed to the cinema halls to watch the new film Call Me, Please, attracted by a poster depicting leading actress Ghada Abdel-Razeq, dressed revealingly and posing sexily. Scantily clad actresses were also used in the posters that advertised black-and-white movies such as Aziza, Pretty and a Liar, Love Nest, Rented Flat, Sunset and Sunrise and Eve on the Road. The most famous kiss in the history of Egyptian cinema, which involved late singer Abdel-Halim Hafiz and actress Nadia Lotfi, dominated the poster for their film My Father on the Tree; the names of the sub-actors …quot; Emad Hamdi and actress Mervat Amin …quot; occupied the small print at the bottom. Modern printing techniques, offering vivid colours and sharp detail, have forced the traditional calligraphers and painters who made these posters to step back. The expensive new posters are the product of desperate co-operation between cash-strapped film producers and computer graphic wizards to get more bums on seats, in a bid to compensate for the losses the producers have sustained because of the global financial crisis. Such posters also publicise the tourist destinations, where the films are set. Meanwhile, the brilliant ideas of foreign poster designers are imported and slightly amended to suit the themes and contents of Egyptian movies. Unlike the posters for the black-andwhite films in the 1970s and 1980s, the designers of today's posters, instructed to do so by the producers, include the names of all the minor actors, technicians, assistants and anyone else who might have been involved in the filmmaking, not just those of the superstars and directors. Some people suggest that the producers insist on lots of names on the posters, so people think that they've spent a huge amount of money on their movies. This new fashion recently prompted a weekly magazine to look at the publicity for new films in the good old days. Years ago, one only found the name of the director, producer and two or three of the actors in the film on the poster for it.
