Wednesday
06Aug2008
Terrific New Poster for the Documentary 'Chevolution'
Wednesday, August 6, 2008 at 1:52AM
If I told you that in our nightly online journeys we
came across a poster for a brand new movie about Che Guevara that played at a
film festival earlier in the year, chances are you might say something like, "Oh
cool. I wanted to see that
Soderbergh movie."
In truth, there are two Soderbergh movies about
the legendary revolutionary. However, this poster isn't for either one of those.
This is the eye-catching one-sheet for
Chevolution, and I can't believe Chevrolet
never put the copyright on that word. This is a documentary about Guevara, but
primarily about the iconography that bears his likeness.
The poster says it's the world's most reproduced
photograph. That would a little surprising if it's true, at least to me, but
then again, I haven't seen all that much of the world. It's still a hell of a
concept for a documentary, focusing microscopically on how one image has in a
large way shaped the world. I think what's true about that picture is that it's
the one of the few iconic images in any culture that we can accurately track.
It's about 50 years old, so we can follow the still-growing
popularity of the picture, what it symbolizes - which changes from one country
to the next - and how ubiquitous it is throughout pop culture, which is a weird but seemingly always eventual place for something like this to wind up.I would imagine more people could tell
you it's a Che Guevara t-shirt than could tell you what Che Guevara did. It's an
interesting study, at least in theory. But the film played the Tribeca Film
Festival, and the reviews were not good. So maybe a poster this cool will help
it find an audience. After all, we know people respond to the photo.
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