At the start of the 20th century Jean Desmet opened Amsterdam’s first permanent movie theater. Through time he build up a unique collection of more then nine hundred movies. For their exhibition about Jean Desmet the Eye Film Institute asked me to design a movie poster for one of the movies from his collection.
‘La mousmée et le brigand’ is a short French movie from 1911. Staged in Japan, it tells a very simple story about a girl and a thief. When designing a filmposter you would normally try to catch the essence of the story by picturing the friction between different characters and elements. But because this story was so simple using literal references to the characters would already give away the plot. Therefor I focussed on the dreamy atmosphere and the more abstract essence of the story instead: the thief’s longing for the girl and his acceptance of her unattainability.
