Urban Wallpaper: Film Posters, City Walls and the Cinematic Public in South Asia

What do film posters on city walls tell us about the relationship between the cinema and the city? In this paper, I rely on the practice and perspective of young men who put up film posters on Dhaka’s city walls to explore this question. I argue that the wall is a key site for the production of a cinematic public that does not map onto film audiences; for the experience of newness in the city and of the cinema as analogous experiences; and for an encounter with imagery that is considered luminous and intense, assailing the crowds that pass by the posters in the congested city.