A collection of nearly 2,400 original film posters from the Soviet Union represents hundreds of films that were shown in Soviet movie theaters from the 1930s through the 1990s. The collection showcases not just the Soviet films produced in all 15 Republics, but also many motion pictures from around the world including the former countries of the Eastern bloc, the United States, South America, and Asia. Many posters from the Academy’s collection were displayed in the windows of movie theatres as they have dates and showtimes handpainted on them.

In the USSR the film posters were commissioned and published by Reklamfilm, the main Soviet film advertising agency which also distributed them throughout the country. Apart from Reklamfilm regional offices in each of the Soviet Republics contracted local artists to provide additional posters, often in the languages of the Republics. An example in this collection are 30 posters from the Republic of Georgia which promoted both locally made films and ones produced by the major studios of Moscow and Leningrad in the Georgian language.

The Soviet Union movie posters collection reflects the aesthetics of the so-called “thaw” period which gained momentum following the death of Josef Stalin in 1953. With a dramatic increase in film production and a shifting focus to the private lives of ordinary people, it was a turning point in the development of the Soviet cinema. On posters from 1950-60s, the essence of the films was mostly conveyed through masterful portrait painting. In the 1970s and 80s, the posters started vividly expressing ideological disillusions as well as concerns with moral and social issues. The collection represents works of several generations of Soviet graphic artists. Boris Rudin, Sergei Datskevich, Aleksandr Shamash, Mikhail Khazanovskii, and Boris Zelenskii are just some of the approximately 300 artists whose posters are in the collection.