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Cinema Banner Painting Workshop

Cinema Banner painting is one of the most popular visual art languages in the South Asia. It was initiated as a publicity medium located at the movie theaters. Henceforth, its inception and evolution is heavily shaped by the growth of cinema industry in this region. To understand the origin of Cinema Banner painting, one could trace back to Raja Ravi Varma’s paintings and popular prints of 19th century, which were based on western academic style. In the field of cinema banner painting, non-academic painters had played the major role to develop its unique style in the Indian subcontinent. A distinct visual aesthetics emerged which was molded by a larger than life manifestation of cinema.


A week-long art workshop on Cinema Banner Painting has started today (5 October 2019) at Jothashilpa Studio in Adabor area in Dhaka organized by Jothashilpa (A Centre for Traditional and Contemporary Arts) in cooperation with Samdani Artists Led Initiatives Forum (SALIF). Master artist of traditional cinema banner painting Mohammad Shoaib is conducting the workshop as mentors while Artist and researcher Shawon Akand is curating the workshop. Five participating artists from different parts of Bangladesh has joined in this second edition of the cinema banner painting workshop. They are Rezaur Rahman, Imtiaz Nasir, Rafiqa Majumdar, Muntasib Rahman Anan and Hemahyet Himu.


This workshop is taking place at Jothashilpa Studio (House 819. Road 5, Baitul Aman Housing, Adabor) from 5 to 11 October 2019.  Last day of the art workshop (11 October 2019, 4 pm to 8pm) will be the Open Studio Day for all viewers to see the artworks and meet the artists at workshop site in Adabor, Dhaka.


The goal of this workshop is to understand and exchange the special skill and visual aesthetics to produce large scale paintings in line with cinema banner painting style and technique. The organizers hope that this will contribute to the contemporary art practice in Bangladesh to find a new way of visual language based on popular culture.


Visit Jotha Shilpa’s website or Facebook page for more details

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