National Film Archive of India acquires rare posters of old Indian films, including rare 6-sheeter of Mughal-e-Azam

"NFAI is delighted announce the acquisition of 2500 posters, including a rare 6-sheeter of Mughal-e-Azam & posters of 90 @SrBachchan films," it tweeted on Friday.

According to a Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (MIB) blog, "The collection includes about 1500 Hindi film posters, in addition to a number of Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam ones. These posters range from 1942 onwards till recent times. The collection showcases the evolution of film publicity covering various techniques of poster-making."

"The gorgeous Mughal-e-Azam 6-sheeter is 10 ft x 5 ft in size. It’s an offset print of a hand-painted poster," NFAI tweeted.

According to the MIB blog, "The Mughal-e-Azam poster is an offset print of a hand-painted poster. The poster has everything – from long shot depictions of the war sequence to a colourful snapshot of the sheesh mahal sequence, all done in beautiful brushstrokes.

To balance the grandeur of these two depictions, the poster also features two intimate portraits. Akbar (Prithviraj Kapoor) sheds a tear in an emotional moment with his son and heir Salim (Dilip Kumar) as they are about to go to war. The shadow of Akbar’s war gear on his face is gorgeously detailed. And to cap things off, there’s a heartrending portrait of Anarkali (Madhubala) in chains, one of the iconic images of Hindi cinema."

Of the 90 posters of superstar Amitabh Bachchan's films, one is from his earliest films Sanjog (1971) and another of his unreleased film Zamaanat.

The MIB blog gave a comprehensive list of the major posters:

Posters of Hindi films such as Roti (1942), Sher-e-Baghdad (1946), Anmol Ghadi (1946), Atom Bomb (1947), Stunt Queen (1947), Pugree (1948), Sant Namdev (1949), Apna Desh (1949), Sant Namdev (1949), Veer Ghatoktach (1949), Deedar (1951), Alam Ara (1956), Dilli Ka Thug (1958),
Phagun (1958), Manzil (1960), Razia Sultana (1961) etc. are a part of this collection.

There are posters featuring Fearless Nadia, for the films Sher-e-Baghdad (1946), Stunt Queen (1947), 11 o’clock (1948) and Shamsherbaaz (1953).

There are numerous posters featuring Dilip Kumar, Madhubala, Raj Kapoor, Meena Kumari, Guru Dutt, Nargis, Shammi Kapoor, Dev Anand, Mumtaz, Dharmendra, Dara Singh and many more. The collection covers a large range of actors and stars from all eras.

There are posters for mythological and historical films such as Sampoorna Ramayan (1961), Shree Ganesh (1962), Veer Abhimanyu (1965), Shankar Sati Anusuya (1965), Veer Bhimsen (1964), Laxmi Narayan (1951), Balram Srikrishna (1968).

Also included are over 120 wall posters of Tamil films, 150 recent films and 600 South Indian language films (mainly Kannada and Telugu).

“This has been a significant addition to NFAI’s ever-growing collection of film related material. We appeal to all film lovers to come forward and provide films and film-related material so that it can be preserved for future generations, said Prakash Magdum, director of NFAI.

Images: NFAI/Twitter