Year: 2019
Hand Painted Movie Posters From Ghana that are Far Out!
When the first video cassette recorders reached Ghana in the 1980s and gradually a rental structure arose for homegrown movies, in the urbane centers of Accra and Kumasi a host of mobile movie theaters started taking shape. Mobile cinema operators would travel the country hooking TVs and VCRs up to portable generators to create impromptu theaters. All they needed was a wall for screening and a couple of benches and chairs.
In order to promote these showings, artists were hired to paint large posters of the films usually on used flour sacks that acted as the canvas. The artists were given the freedom to paint the posters as they desired – often adding elements that weren’t in the actual films, or without even having seen the movies. Many of the representations are dramatically exaggerated. When the posters were finished they were rolled up and folded and taken on the road.
Although “mobile cinema” began to decline in the mid-nineties due to greater availability of television and video, hand painted movie posters continued to exist. Like India, hand-painted advertising boards for hairdresser salons, take-aways, or native healers are still very much a normal part of street life in sub-Saharan Africa.
Photos of Very Ominous Looking Storms
The photos are from New Mexico, North and South Dakota, Oklahoma and Wyoming.
“Who Was In My Room Last Night?”
I’m flying…
I’m flying, I’m flying, I’m flying, I’m flying, I’m flying, I’m flying, flying away, I’m flying away
I’m flying, I’m flying, I’m flying, I’m flying, I’m flying, I’m flying, I’m flying
I’m flying, I’m flying, I’m flying, I’m flying, I’m flying, I’m flying
All night long, my body burned
The sheets were wet and cold
The lights were on, my eyes were gone
And any second lose control
The pounding on my window’s
Just the pounding in my head
I wonder who was in my room last night
Who the hell was in my bed?
There must have been a body there
I swear I felt some flesh
It took a little time, but I figured they were mine
There were fingers going down my chest
My mouth went through the ceiling
And my body fell to the floor
I couldn’t find a key ’cause there was no hole I could see
And someone had moved the door
The cops, the priest, the crisis line
And no one really had a clue
No one to tell us who was touchin’ me
Or exactly what I could do
My throat was dry, my hopes were high
But nothing really ever got said
But who was in my room last night?
Who the hell was in my bed?
Movies from an Alternate Universe
Classic films often get remade with new actors and sometimes modern storyline, but what would happen if it went the other way? Imagine what if movies of the present age were thrown back to the old era? Who would star? How would the posters look like.
Artist Peter Stults created some wonderfully creative posters reimagining what popular movies of today would be like should they have been made in a different time with Hollywood stars of yore.
“Awhile back a friend of mine forwarded me a site where artist Sean Hartter made posters of films that, title wise, we were familiar with, but there was a slight difference; they were remade as if they belonged to a different era or a different genre, the name of the movie was there, but the actors were different, the style was different, and I loved the concept. So I went forward with this theme; what if movies we were all familiar with were made in a different slice of time? Who would be in it? Who would direct it? So here we are…
Industrial Landscapes
Edward Burtynsky is a Canadian photographer and artist who has achieved international recognition for his large-format photographs of industrial landscapes. Burtynsky’s most famous photographs are sweeping views of landscapes altered by industry: mine tailings, quarries, scrap piles. The grand, awe-inspiring beauty of his images is often in tension with the compromised environments they depict. He has made several excursions to China to photograph that country’s industrial emergence, and construction of one of the world’s largest engineering projects, the Three Gorges Dam. His work is housed in more than fifteen major museums including the Guggenheim Museum, the National Gallery of Canada, and the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris.
Freeways in Los Angeles, California
Houston, Texas
Scrap Auto Engines, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
SOCAR Oil Fields Baku, Azerbaijan
Oil fields, Belridge, California
Oxford Tire Pile, Westley, California, USA
Silver Lake Operations, Lake Lefroy, Western Australia
C.N. Track, Skihist Provincial Park, British Columbia
Active Section, E.L. Smith Quarry, Barre, Vermont
A Very Strange Airport
Madeira International Airport, located near Funchal, Madeira in Portugal was first opened on July 1964 with two 1,600-meter (5,249 ft) runways. The short runway made landing a tricky business for even the most experienced of pilots. The high mountains surrounding the airport and the nearby ocean only complicated matters. First the pilots has to aim their aircraft at the mountains, and then break a hard right to meet the runway. Aside to the shift of direction, the warm winds coming off the ocean meet the cooler mountain dry air, which in-turn produces massive turbulence.
On November 19, 1977, a Boeing 727 aircraft flying from Brussels tried desperately to stop after touching down 2000 feet past the threshold in heavy rain, strong winds and poor visibility, but slid off the end and plunged 200 feet into the land below killing 131 people aboard. The crash prompted officials to explore ways of extending the short runway.
Eight years after the incident a 200 meters extension was built over the ocean and again extended in 2000. But instead of using landfill, the extension was built on a series of 180 concrete columns, each being about 70 meters. The total length of the runway was almost doubled, which means that half of the runway is held up by pillars.
For the unique runway expansion project the Funchal Airport has won the Outstanding Structures Award in 2004 given by International Association for Bridge and Structural Engineering (IABSE).
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