Götz Valien is Berlin’s final film poster artist, for greater than three many years incomes a modest dwelling producing large hand-painted movie adverts to hold on the metropolis’s most beloved historic cinemas – a craft he says will in all probability die with him, at the very least in western Europe. The studios’ personal promotional posters function a template, however Austrian-born Valien, 65, provides a particular pop artwork flourish to every picture coupled with the great thing about imperfection – a part of the rationale he has managed to increase his profession properly into the twenty first century.
“Promoting is about drawing consideration and I add the human contact, which is why it really works,” he mentioned. Valien’s work performs up the picture’s essence: the imposing bow of a ship, the haunting eyes of a display siren, a mysterious smile. He jokingly calls himself a Kinosaurier – a play on the German phrases for cinema and dinosaur.
His nearly-7×9-metre canvases long-graced the “movie palaces” of the German capital, together with the majestic Delphi within the west and the socialist modernist masterpiece Kino Worldwide on Karl Marx Allee within the east. However the former’s adverts lastly went digital in 2024, whereas the latter is closed for a years-long, top-to-bottom revamp. Dozens of unbiased cinemas amongst his purchasers have merely gone out of enterprise. The century-old Filmtheater am Friedrichshain (FaF) is the final film theatre in Berlin nonetheless using Valien to tout its new releases, together with his large-format posters overlaying its facade and inside partitions across the ticket-and-popcorn counter.
Gazing up at his rendering of the kohl-eyed, flower-rimmed visage of Penélope Cruz from Pedro Almodóvar’s 2006 melodrama Volver, a basic nonetheless hanging within the foyer, Valien sighed: “Isn’t she magnificent?”
Past vestiges of a proud custom in international locations akin to Ghana, Nepal and India, Valien mentioned solely a vanishing variety of film theatres worldwide nonetheless used hand-painted posters. He is aware of of solely two colleagues in Germany: in Munich and Bremen. “Paris, Portugal – all of them say certain, we had them, however these days are over.”
The FaF supervisor, Andreas Tölle, mentioned the posters had grow to be a cherished a part of the neighbourhood. “Individuals now come by when the brand new ones are up and take footage,” he mentioned. “And that fascination additionally brings individuals into the cinema.”
Film posters have existed so long as the almost 130-year-old movie business. However today, few releases keep lengthy sufficient in cinemas to justify bespoke artwork to promote them, communications research professor Patrick Rössler of the College of Erfurt, who has studied the historical past of movie posters, instructed native media. And most unbiased cinemas don’t have the revenue margins to afford them, even at what Valien calls his bargain-basement costs.
Again on the dwelling studio that he and his spouse, Silke, purchased many years in the past within the coronary heart of the Schöneberg neighbourhood’s historic queer red-light district, Valien recounted his arrival in West Berlin within the Eighties. When the Wall lastly fell, he was unimpressed with what he discovered within the east. “It simply appeared unhappy and colourless, after which someday I realised what was lacking – the billboards,” he mentioned.
After failing to realize admission to movie college – “in my view, the avant garde had misplaced its manner – it acquired too philosophical,” he mentioned – Valien returned to his past love, portray, which he had discovered in Vienna utilizing “outdated grasp methods”.
Within the early Nineties, he discovered work with an promoting agency – one among two Berlin studios producing painted film billboards. His first poster was for Steven Spielberg’s Hook, and Valien shortly gained a city-wide popularity as he churned out photorealistic posters in simply two days, in time for the films’ releases on Thursdays. “To not brag, however I used to be a Ferrari amongst horse-drawn carriages,” he mentioned of his competitors. After the dying of two aged colleagues, Valien discovered himself the final man standing.
In his heyday he might journey down the elegant Kurfürstendamm, as soon as dwelling to dozens of cinemas, and all of the movie billboards up and down the boulevard have been his handiwork. “Now they’re H&Ms, Zara, Tommy Hilfiger …,” he mentioned.
The spectacular success of the 1997 blockbuster Titanic almost broke his enterprise because it stayed within the cinemas for months, blocking new releases in want of contemporary posters. Final 12 months, Valien lastly had to surrender a a lot bigger devoted studio and an assistant because the orders dwindled. There he had used a mechanical lifting platform to cowl the floor-to-ceiling canvases. “Portray nearly day by day in that massive format is like working up Mount Everest barefoot,” he mentioned. “Exhausting.”
Valien estimated he has created greater than 3,000 posters through the years utilizing the acrylic paints that lie scattered among the many brushes and spray weapons round his sunlight-flooded workshop. He declined to say how a lot he earns per poster, however says his movie work is actually “non-profit” and a “labour of affection” whereas he pursues different artwork initiatives.
He stays unsentimental in regards to the posters themselves, noting that he used to easily paint over earlier works to economize on canvases. FaF has a small archive whereas Valien maintains an lively Instagram account displaying himself in ironic, hammy poses in entrance of his work. In honour of its a centesimal anniversary and Valien’s many years of service, FaF is working a Films on Canvas homage collection of screenings paired with an exhibition of a few of his best-loved posters: Stroll the Line, Frances Ha, Brokeback Mountain, Little Miss Sunshine and, not least, The Artist.
