Yesterday, I found out that BFI has finally come to their senses and has begun to offer for sale prints of the wood/lino cuts made for Academy Cinema by Peter Strausfeld. According to this shyster (he sells backissues of Sight and Sound, the same ones that can regularly be found on ebay for only a few dollars, for as much as £35.00 a piece and he occasionally lists his magazines on ebay without a picture for equally absurd prices), Strausford (b. 1910) designed posters for Academy from some time after the second World War until his death in 1980.
A few years ago, I bought an original Strausford Academy print on ebay as a gift for a friend who I owed a major favor to. This print, listed on ebay as a poster, cost me something like $300, which, because of the vaguely-worded item description, I thought was a major rip off until the item (eventually) arrived in the mail. As I opened the shipping tube, I smelled the printer’s ink and realized that this wasn’t just some old poster that I had sunk far too much money in to. I seriously considered keeping this thing for myself but surprisingly I did the right thing and gave it to the person who I bought it for. The print, for Barbara Loden’s Wanda (see below), that I bought was originally one of one hundred but now is one of the first of thirty that BFI is offering on items ranging from a virtual index card to a jig saw puzzle.
Here are some of the other Strausfeld prints that BFI is offering. Obviously the site branded them with the BFI logo to prevent folks like me from reproducing them. Ignore that.
chained and perfumed 