Farishtay

Classic Bollywood movie poster of the Hindi film Farishtay (1991) for sale.

This is an actual surviving poster of the 1991 film that featured south India’s biggest superstar of all time, Rajinikanth (the second highest paid actor in Asia after Jackie Chan), who plays the role of a police officer. The film also stars Sridevi, Dharmendra & Vinod Khanna.

Printed and circulated somewhere during the first release of the film, this classic movie poster was originally designed for publicity of the film but never ended up being used.

This poster was originally designed by cutting out images of actors from separate still photographs (shot on set location) and pasting them on a board. The typography is hand drawn / hand painted, which makes this poster an interesting mix of two very different design techniques.

The poster features a large cut out photograph of Sridevi at the center – capitalizing on her stardom at the time. A still photo of Rajinikanth in a police uniform is seen on the left whereas Dharmendra and Vinod Khanna (who play brothers in the film) are seen wearing rounds of ammunition strapped to their chests and holding machine guns on the top. The typography used in this poster is entirely in English, except for a translation of the title in Devanagari Hindi on the top left. The film’s title is seen in tricolor lending a patriotic vibe to the film.

Farishtay is a 1991 film about two brothers who are petty criminals, played by Dharmendra and Vinod Khanna, who set out to find the killer of their close friend’s police officer husband (played by Rajinikanth).