Artist Mark Todd, a long-time DART subscriber and multiple AI awardee, is presenting a large selection of hand-painted movie posters from Ghana, West Africa. In an email exchange this week he wrote:

These wild posters were once the product of a much larger industry known as the Ghanaian Mobile Cinema”. This business started in the late 1980’s when Ghanain entrepreneurs formed video clubs. With a television, vcr, vhs tapes, and a portable generator they’d travel throughout Ghana setting up make-shift screening areas in villages with little or no electricity. These video clubs also had more permanent theaters in the cities like Accra, Cape Coast and Kumasi.

HeyThere Projects, co-founded in 2019 by Mark, with colleague Aaron Smith, has partnered with with Deadly Prey Gallery in Chicago in hosting this exhibition of painted movie posters from Ghana for film imports including Hollywood action and horror, low budget American straight to video features, Bollywood films, Hong Kong martial arts movies, and of course an ever-growing selection of native Ghanaian and Nigerian features. 

With no affordable access to printing, the hand-painted movie poster was the most logical advertising vehicle. Skilled local artists were now part of this growing entertainment industry in Ghana, and they surely brought their own distinct touch to each film they were called upon to promote. Painte @mark_toddls mixed with house paint, these 1980s rarities can now be purchased from the gallery, with proceeds going in part to Ghanian artists currently keeping this extraordinary art of the film alive today.

Deadly Prey Gallery was founded by Brian Chankin in Chicago, in partnership with his best friend Robert Kofi in Accra, Ghana. Their goal is to preserve, archive and educate people about these amazing paintings from Ghana, while continuing to directly support the artists in Ghana still working in the genre today.

Hey There Projects, 61675 Twentynine Palms Highway, Joshua Tree, CA Info @mark_todd