Ethnic Time: The Movie!

First off, love these posters.

Second, started thinking if I SHOULD love these posters. There's something about these, specifically the ethnicized typeface, that makes me uneasy. Like, of course they chose the "African" typeface for a movie called "Zulu", because it just makes sense. It's also silly as hell and an easy choice and very typical of the time.

But that doesn't mean it doesn't look great and make me want to see the film.

Got me thinking about what we're doing with the poster for my thesis film "Narcocorrido". Settled on some beautiful, startling imagery that I feel is authentic and of the folk tradition of the music and very fitting for the type of film we made, but also could be taken as one of these sort of cultural assumptions made by the uninformed. Something made outside of a culture discussing a culture and using just enough hints of cultural identity to sort of suggest being of the culture. The Mexican FUBU, if you will.

I don't think we're this deep in the bullshit, of course -- it doesn't keep me up nights or anything like that. We've taken great care to tell the story we wanted from multiple perspectives set in this world of the Narcocorrido. And we want the film to act as an introduction to this music and culture and the stories told, this artform that's really great and interesting. So the film works as an outsider's look in.

And it's probably just worth a thought before you go full ethnic on your film's marketing, nonetheless.