GALLERY OF FILM POSTER ART

The Steve Olson Collection

at the

CSUN CINEMATHEQUE

The Alan and Elaine Armer Theater

Department of Cinema and Television Arts

Mike Curb College of Arts, Media, and Communication

In the main corridor of Manzanita Hall––at California State University, Northridge––are to be found "six sheet" movie posters for Going My Way, Prison Train, and The Green-Eyed Monster.  These  historically commanding posters introduce the pictorially rich space of the CSUN Gallery of Film Poster Art.  These three large pieces represent a spectrum of film creativity that spans the extremes from top-level Hollywood studio production to low-budget "poverty row" effort.  The main gallery, featuring the distinguished Steve Olson Collection, offers film poster art of international significance. 

The environment for these cultural treasures is Manzanita Hall, the $16.8-million Arts, Media, and Communication building, designed by Robert A.M. Stern, dean of Yale University's School of Architecture.  Mr. Stern described the new building as a unifier and a catalyst for creative exchange:  "The more people are on the Web, on e-mail, the more faxes are running around the world, the more people are able to accomplish their work at home and deal with their daily lives from there, the more they will need places to come to terms with the inherent reality of human beings."

The film poster ambience for the Cinematheque programming at the Alan and Elaine Armer Theater [Manzanita 100] attempts to create this place.  As D. W. Kummel writes in Bibliographical Handbook of American Music:   "The motion picture poster was acquired and cherished for its vague but real cultural delight.  The possession of items of beauty should be seen as serving to elevate the owner or the beholder.  Historical collections reflect and foster owners who are thereby the more humane, more filled with delight, good taste, and understanding of human history, and thus more responsive to one's fellow citizenry and the democratic society that was part of the collective national vision."