In August 2011 I was lucky enough to visit the island of Cuba for a ten day trip, which was a fantastic experience. It really does feel like a country stuck in a time warp, circa 1965, particularly once you leave the capital and head into the countryside. It’s a stunningly beautiful island with very hospitable people but the relative poverty of the country is clear to see. It’s often said that the government is likely to relax the current freeze on foreign (particularly Western) investment once ‘Comandante’ Fidel Castro passes away, although with his brother Raul currently in charge very little has changed. This article on the BBC gives you an insight into the current situation.

The Cuban people’s love for film and cinema-going is legendary and our guidebook claimed that at the end of the 1950s there were over 300 cinemas in the capital Havana alone. Today, these great old buildings continue to thrive and whilst there I witnessed the queues of people lining up to see the latest releases. I took this picture of the Yara cinema in the Vedado area of Havana.

Whilst in Havana I visited a bookshop that was selling original Cuban propaganda posters printed in the 1950s and 60s by OSPAAAL. They also had a handful of screen-printed film posters, all of which were reprints of the original Cuban cinema posters or re-imagined designs by local artists. They are officially screen printed by the ICAIC (Instituto Cubano de Artes Industrias Cinematografia) in Havana.

This poster for Stanley Kubrick’s classic Clockwork Orange was designed by the Cuban artist Nelson Ponce (full name Nelson Ponce Sanchez) who was born in 1976 and is a graphic designer and illustrator who also teaches at the ISDI (Instituto Superior de Diseño Industrial) in Havana. His re-imagined poster for the Cuban film Vampiros en la Habana, which was released in 1999, won him acclaim from both the design community and the Cuban public.

The Havana Cultura website has a great interview with the designer.

Whilst at the shop I also picked up a couple of other film posters and a handful of original propaganda posters which I plan to post on the site in the coming months.

The next non-poster addition to the site is this original program (brochure) for Stanley Kubrick’s legendary 1971 film Clockwork Orange. I believe that it is from the film’s original release, although (frustratingly) it is not dated to confirm this. It would likely have been given away, or perhaps sold, at particular performances or cinemas and features a short write-up on the film, a cast-list and then a series of quotes alongside imagery from the film.

The cover displays British artist Philip Castle‘s iconic illustration of Alex (Malcolm McDowell) that was used to promote the film around the world, and the brochure also features images of other illustrations that Castle painted for the film (the illustration of the glass and teeth, for example) that were not printed as posters. The lurid pink colours make some of the text hard to read and it’s an odd design choice, although I expect it was intended to convey the ‘shocking’ nature of the film itself.

If anyone has any definitive information as to when this program would have originally been used to promote the film please get in touch.

Stanley Kubrick’s classic 1971 dystopian sci-fi, A Clockwork Orange, was met with controversy as soon as it was released in 1971, despite being a hit with UK and US audiences and earning box-office profits several times its original production budget. Unfortunately for UK audiences, the film was withdrawn from distribution in 1973 at the insistence of Kubrick himself following a number of death threats that were apparently received by the director and his family. These threats had been the result of the film being implicated, or at least referenced, in several high-profile criminal cases, including one in which an elderly vagrant had been kicked to death, mirroring an infamous scene in Kubrick’s film.

Despite being freely available across the rest of Europe and in the US, the film remained out of UK cinemas and, during the 1980s, off British video rental shop shelves. When the legendary London cinema the Scala Film Club decided to show the film in 1993 they were sued by Warner Bros at Kubrick’s insistence. The studio won the court case and the cinema club was effectively bankrupt, with plans for expansion quickly shelved. The club produced its last ‘what’s on’ calendar in May 1993 and the Scala converted to a music venue towards the end of the 1990s.

When Kubrick died in 1999 the ban was relaxed and the film was finally made available on VHS and DVD. A limited cinema run also took place and this quad was produced at the time. It uses part of the original artwork that featured on posters for the film around the world, which was painted by the renowned British artist Philip Castle. The final one sheet for the film is one of the most iconic posters of all time, with the same painting being used to promote the film all over the world, and it continues to be used to promote the film to this day. The original UK quad features more of Castle’s artwork and a more muted colour scheme, but features the same tag-line.

Born in London in 1943, Philip Castle’s design career has seen him working on album covers for some of the biggest names in British music, including Wings, Mott the Hoople and Pulp. His skills were utilised for the famous cover for David Bowie’s Aladdin Sane, which saw him airbrushing over a photograph by Celia Philo. He also worked on the cover for the legendary computer game Elite. In 1987 Kubrick and Castle would collaborate once more on the poster for Full Metal Jacket, which again proved to be a seminal piece of work. There’s an interesting interview with Castle available to watch on YouTube in which he discusses his work with Kubrick.

This page features several examples of his brilliant work and there are multiple images tagged on Tumblr. The posters I’ve collected by him can be seen here.