臺南全美戲院手繪廣告招牌

Taiwan painter keeps up hand-painted movie poster tradition

09-14-2013 07:52 BJT

Watch Video

Play Video

In an age of multiplexes and 3D projection, there’s a cinema in Taiwan that’s helping to keep old fashioned movie-going alive. The Chuan Mei picture house has a particularly unusual feature - film posters, all painted by hand.
In an era where 3D is giving way to the brand new 7D cinema experience. And where even the display of film posters is going digital.
全美戲院The Chuan Mei theatre in Tainan city in southern Taiwan is certainly a rarity where not much has changed in the last 5 decades.
Prepare yourself for a feast of a once popular art form - hand-painted posters.
Tom Cruise and Robert Downey Junior are among those created by hand - as if the digital era never arrived.
Oil painter Yan Jhen-Fa said, "The movie poster we make is very big, unlike making a smaller sketch. With a smaller sketch, you can control the scale of the picture easily. But for the large movie posters it is hard to scale the size correctly."
Yan, who has been creating oil paintings for almost half a century, says he used to paint for several cinemas in the city but now it’s only Chuan Mei which sticks to the original style.

Yan, who has been creating oil paintings for almost half a century, says he used to paint for several cinemas in the city but now it’s only Chuan Mei which sticks to the original style.

Wu Jun-Cheng, owner of Chuan Mei Theater, said, "Of course, we can print a poster digitally through a computer. But when you look at the price, it is not that cheap. And we thought the oil paint could also give our theatre a certain atmosphere. So when we consider everything, we still prefer the oil paints."
And it’s not just the oil paints.. Chuan Mei is going retro all the way.
Instead of computer-generated tickets, customers get the real thing with stamping.
The only compromise is a computerised cinema projector...as movies are no longer distributed on film.
Cinema-goer Carey Chen said, "I like bringing my children here, so they can experience what the movie theatre in the old days was like. Of course, there are other movie theatres with better interior designs but the tickets are more expensive and there is no sentimental feeling about it."
And the feeling doesn’t stop at the cinema experience.
Yan’s hand-painted posters have also been encouraging people to pick up a paint brush.
Though he doubts that anyone would want to take up his work when he retires.
He just wants to spread his love of painting to as many people as possible.

Yan, who has been creating oil paintings for almost half a century, says he used to paint for several cinemas in the city but now it’s only Chuan Mei which sticks to the original style.

Yan, who has been creating oil paintings for almost half a century, says he used to paint for several cinemas in the city but now it’s only Chuan Mei which sticks to the original style.

Yan, who has been creating oil paintings for almost half a century, says he used to paint for several cinemas in the city but now it’s only Chuan Mei which sticks to the original style.