Film Ephemera Collection

The Film Ephemera Collection at MAP consists of over 17,000 printed art objects that were used primarily for film promotions. These publicity materials were widely circulated in the analogue era beginning from the 1940s- 1990s and later evolved into digitally printed objects.

The collection includes a wide array of film posters, song booklets, pressbooks, lobby stills, lobby cards, calendar prints to phonograph album covers for films and albums produced primarily in India. Some highlights of the collection include ephemera featuring Bombay cinema’s leading acting stars such as Raj Kapoor, Dev Anand, Rajesh Khanna, Dharmendra, Amitabh Bachchan, Shahrukh Khan, Madhubala, Nargis, Waheeda Rehman, Rekha, Hema Malini, Zeenat Aman and so on.

There is also a sizable collection of middle cinema, especially Hrishikesh Mukherjee’s films, parallel cinema of the 1970s and 80s funded by the National Film Development Corporation (NFDC).  While the collection predominantly focuses on Hindi cinema, it also includes a small collection of artworks made for the Bengali, Gujarati and Marathi cinema industries and a selection of Hollywood. This collection was gifted to MAP by Richa and Jamshed Chinoy.

Lobby Card featuring Zeenat Aman in Razia Sultan