My Mirror column on 15 May 2016:
An award-winning documentary looks at the last surviving practitioners of a dwindling art form: hand-painted film hoardings.
In the summer of 2007, I met a painter of signs. The idea was that of my photographer friend and colleague, who thought 'juice-stall sign painter' was a perfect fit for a cover story on 'Odd Jobs' for the city magazine we worked for. I remember Charan Singh's workshop, off HC Sen Road in Old Delhi: a ramshackle shed full of painted plastic and rexine signs drying: hung on a clothesline, spread on a charpai. Charan had been painting signs since the 1960s, he was famous "in his line". He said he'd invented the Fruit Juice style: the bright seven-colour typography now characteristic of juice shops across North India. Depending on the client's budget and specifications, the sign could have only lettering, or a fancier design that included flowers, fruits (which he and his sons claimed a certain expertise in), even faces. The faces were invariably those of film stars. "Shah Rukh and Salman are the favourites, especially Salman after Tere Naam," said Charan. It was a hot day when we met, and the old man looked a little wilted. But as soon as I asked about the digital takeover of his profession, he perked up to deny it: "Computer mein itni show nahi hai, chamak-dhamak nahi hai. Aap dekhna, haath ka kaam hi chal niklega."
I remembered Charan recently when I watched In Search of Fading Canvas, a Films Division documentary directed by Manohar Singh Bisht that won a Special Jury Award at the recently concluded 63rd National Film Awards. Bisht spent two years filming with artists who make hand-painted billboards and banners for films. Almost every painter he interviewed for the film is over 70. Some are over 90. Several of the Bombay-based painters remember the films with which they began work -- Mehboob Khan's Aan (1952), Raj Kapoor's Aah (1953), Shaheed Latif's Sone ki Chidiya(1958).
At Alfred Theatre in Bombay, we meet S. Rehman, one of the last painters in the city to remain employed by a cinema. The owner continues to support Rehman's workshop, in which every banner is produced collectively, just the way a miniature was created in the Mughal karkhana: the master painter draws the outline and plans the layout, someone fills in the background, someone else does the text. Except here the art is one of scaling up, not scaling down. Cinema here is literally "larger than life".
It is remarkable how closely the painter's work is tied to the movie business. Rehman and his boys —his assistant painters — make a new banner by hand every week, and after seven days they paint over it to create a new one. This cycle of time is one aspect — as long as the film runs, the poster stays up. Sometimes the relationship went deeper than periodicity: the painter's fortunes could fluctuate according to the gambling instinct of those who ran the film trade. K. Chinappa, a painter from Bangalore, remembers the release of the Bachchan-starrer Naseeb. "The distributer came to me and said, will this film run? I said, Sir! It will be a superhit. He said, okay, if it is a superhit, I'll give you three times your Rs 30,000 fee. And he actually gave me Rs 90,000!" Other painters, however, tell Bisht of how their payments depended on the film's success: "Take your money when the next film releases, they'd say. And if the next release also tanked? Then no money again."
It isn't surprising, then, that most painters were deeply invested in the film doing well. In Lucknow, the ex-painter Parvez now sells Uttar Pradesh number-plates outside the cinema which once hired him to make banners. "We wanted to get the public into the theatre," grins Parvez. "If Pran was in the movie, whether he had any fighting scenes or not, we would put a small gun in his hand in the poster. Make the public think there is action..."
Despite a distractingly awful English voiceover and an insistence on introducing each town he visits with a flat shot of its railway station, Bisht's film remains winsome. His characters have character. One painter says he only wears white clothes to work, so that the reflected glare from his clothes cannot impair his judgement of the hues. Another lists things to avoid if the film is to be a hit — you can call them superstitions, or an acute grasp of the market he once catered to. Never use a green background. Never have a poster without any stars' faces. Never have type that runs vertically. Never set the image in a circle. "Any poster does these things, the film has flopped."
Painter Madan from Lucknow sometimes talks to the stars he paints. "Kucch toh kismat chamkao, Salluji!" he says with an affectionate nudge. "If they make Rs 200 crore, shouldn't we also reach Rs 200 rupees? Woh parde ke kalakaar, hum bajaar ke kalakaar." But these 'artists of the bazaar' can no longer turn a profit. The Haryana-born artists who now travel by two-wheelers, painting product ads on highways, are quite clear that digital has killed the hand-painted banner. "No new people have joined this profession in the last five-seven years."
Charan was wrong. The curtains will soon come down on the colourful world of the poster-painter. Computer chal nikla hai.
Published in Mumbai Mirror, 15 May 2016.
An award-winning documentary looks at the last surviving practitioners of a dwindling art form: hand-painted film hoardings.
In the summer of 2007, I met a painter of signs. The idea was that of my photographer friend and colleague, who thought 'juice-stall sign painter' was a perfect fit for a cover story on 'Odd Jobs' for the city magazine we worked for. I remember Charan Singh's workshop, off HC Sen Road in Old Delhi: a ramshackle shed full of painted plastic and rexine signs drying: hung on a clothesline, spread on a charpai. Charan had been painting signs since the 1960s, he was famous "in his line". He said he'd invented the Fruit Juice style: the bright seven-colour typography now characteristic of juice shops across North India. Depending on the client's budget and specifications, the sign could have only lettering, or a fancier design that included flowers, fruits (which he and his sons claimed a certain expertise in), even faces. The faces were invariably those of film stars. "Shah Rukh and Salman are the favourites, especially Salman after Tere Naam," said Charan. It was a hot day when we met, and the old man looked a little wilted. But as soon as I asked about the digital takeover of his profession, he perked up to deny it: "Computer mein itni show nahi hai, chamak-dhamak nahi hai. Aap dekhna, haath ka kaam hi chal niklega."
I remembered Charan recently when I watched In Search of Fading Canvas, a Films Division documentary directed by Manohar Singh Bisht that won a Special Jury Award at the recently concluded 63rd National Film Awards. Bisht spent two years filming with artists who make hand-painted billboards and banners for films. Almost every painter he interviewed for the film is over 70. Some are over 90. Several of the Bombay-based painters remember the films with which they began work -- Mehboob Khan's Aan (1952), Raj Kapoor's Aah (1953), Shaheed Latif's Sone ki Chidiya(1958).
At Alfred Theatre in Bombay, we meet S. Rehman, one of the last painters in the city to remain employed by a cinema. The owner continues to support Rehman's workshop, in which every banner is produced collectively, just the way a miniature was created in the Mughal karkhana: the master painter draws the outline and plans the layout, someone fills in the background, someone else does the text. Except here the art is one of scaling up, not scaling down. Cinema here is literally "larger than life".
It is remarkable how closely the painter's work is tied to the movie business. Rehman and his boys —his assistant painters — make a new banner by hand every week, and after seven days they paint over it to create a new one. This cycle of time is one aspect — as long as the film runs, the poster stays up. Sometimes the relationship went deeper than periodicity: the painter's fortunes could fluctuate according to the gambling instinct of those who ran the film trade. K. Chinappa, a painter from Bangalore, remembers the release of the Bachchan-starrer Naseeb. "The distributer came to me and said, will this film run? I said, Sir! It will be a superhit. He said, okay, if it is a superhit, I'll give you three times your Rs 30,000 fee. And he actually gave me Rs 90,000!" Other painters, however, tell Bisht of how their payments depended on the film's success: "Take your money when the next film releases, they'd say. And if the next release also tanked? Then no money again."
It isn't surprising, then, that most painters were deeply invested in the film doing well. In Lucknow, the ex-painter Parvez now sells Uttar Pradesh number-plates outside the cinema which once hired him to make banners. "We wanted to get the public into the theatre," grins Parvez. "If Pran was in the movie, whether he had any fighting scenes or not, we would put a small gun in his hand in the poster. Make the public think there is action..."
Despite a distractingly awful English voiceover and an insistence on introducing each town he visits with a flat shot of its railway station, Bisht's film remains winsome. His characters have character. One painter says he only wears white clothes to work, so that the reflected glare from his clothes cannot impair his judgement of the hues. Another lists things to avoid if the film is to be a hit — you can call them superstitions, or an acute grasp of the market he once catered to. Never use a green background. Never have a poster without any stars' faces. Never have type that runs vertically. Never set the image in a circle. "Any poster does these things, the film has flopped."
Painter Madan from Lucknow sometimes talks to the stars he paints. "Kucch toh kismat chamkao, Salluji!" he says with an affectionate nudge. "If they make Rs 200 crore, shouldn't we also reach Rs 200 rupees? Woh parde ke kalakaar, hum bajaar ke kalakaar." But these 'artists of the bazaar' can no longer turn a profit. The Haryana-born artists who now travel by two-wheelers, painting product ads on highways, are quite clear that digital has killed the hand-painted banner. "No new people have joined this profession in the last five-seven years."
Charan was wrong. The curtains will soon come down on the colourful world of the poster-painter. Computer chal nikla hai.
Published in Mumbai Mirror, 15 May 2016.
