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A decade ago, there was hardly a street corner in Indian cities that wasn’t plastered with sleazy posters of adult movies. Over the years, the posters and the risqu`E9 morning-show films they advertised have mostly disappeared from Indian cinemas.
Sunil says the attempt is not just to shock people but also help them reconnect with the forgotten past of Indian cinema. Before the advent of the Internet and multiplex chains, cinemas across the country screened adult films in the morning before switching to mainstream fare later in the day. The posters, often featuring scantily clad women in the throes of passion, appealed to cinema-goers hungry for a dose of erotica. The images and innuendos reflect conservative India’s awkward approach towards sex, where casual sex and live-in couples were still considered beyond the pale. Some of the posters featured foreign women who were not part of the film. "(Some would) cut and paste...some lingerie model from Vogue or some place," says Sunil. A poster of Air Hostess Girls shows a close-up of Brooke Shields, who starred in the 1980 Hollywood film The Blue Lagoon and unwittingly became the face of many of these soft porn Indian films. Often, cinema owners would insert nude scenes from foreign films, including those from The Blue Lagoon into the so-called B-grade Indian movies. Several years after soft porn films nearly died out, mainstream Bollywood has now shed its inhibitions to make a movie about a former sex symbol—and the movie’s own poster is reminiscent of the morning show style. The Dirty Picture is based on the life of Silk Smitha, a south Indian actress, who became a household name in the 1980s and 1990s with her semi-nude scenes and brazen on-screen persona. — Reuters
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But recently in New Delhi,
a unique exhibition tried to give these posters a new lease of life.
"When I talk to some young people...(they) do not know this whole
morning show culture," says V. Sunil, exhibition curator and owner
of the poster collection.