Film Posters - The Birth of modern City Landscape

Movie posters are printed to advertise film works. They are displayed in movie theaters and on street corners, and their usefulness ends when their film's run concludes. However, along with this practical side, some posters also have strong artistic qualities and unique designs that leave a strong impression on people. From the 1910s until the 1930s, in particular, motion pictures were symbolic of modernist culture, and their posters became an important element of the modern urban landscapes arising in Tokyo and other cities.
Established in April of 2018, the National Film Archive of Japan (NFAJ; previously the National Film Center of the National Museum of Modern Art) is Japan's only national film organization that has continuously collected and preserved motion pictures as cultural assets and actively screened them. However, non-film materials also form an important part of our collection. Such materials include posters, stills, scenarios, press materials, equipment, and books. We are now in the process of digitalizing those items to improve accessibility to them. For posters alone, we are proud to say that our collection currently contains some 59,000 items. Digitalizing them has given us the ability to create high-quality reproductions. These reproductions allow us to take our posters out of the exhibition room and put them back on the street.
Most of the 24 posters on display here were selected from the "Misono Collection," a compilation of items that were once owned by a collector of rare film-related artifacts named Kyohei Misono (1919-2000). It is a cornerstone of our non-film materials collection. We are also presenting an innovative exhibit featuring historical photographs of movie theaters from Tokyo's past that was made possible through digital technology. Although small, we hope our exhibition will help visitors appreciate the charm of movie posters and the historical value of photographic materials. We further hope that it will encourage rediscovery of the richness of a film culture that has enchanted people in a time of modern urbanization.