Old Movie Pamphlets

Movie pamphlets are excellent guides and advertisement pieces that help us recall our fond memories of watching the films. They are, unlike movie posters, often printed double-sided. They write character descriptions, behind-scene stories, movie plots, and so on; they also feature still images from the films.

 

Korea and Japan are the two countries that most actively produce and distribute these movie pamphlets--of not only their domestic films but also overseas films. You may visit a local Korean theater and easily find pamphlets of the latest films showing there.

The movie pamphlets that are exhibited here have been mostly donated by collector Kim Min-woong. Among the pamphlets of the films from the 1930s through the 1950s are ones of the film Roman Holiday (1953) and ones of the film Gone with the Wind (1939); the former were printed and distributed in 1955 (i.e., Korean release year), only two years after the film’s original U.S. release, and the latter were in 1972, contrastingly 30 years after the film’s U.S. release. Seeing these “old-fashioned” designs in the “old” pamphlets of the “old” films, we may enjoy our nostalgia for the eras.