Calling all film buffs. Why not bring the silver screen to life in your home by acquiring film memorabilia? And who knows, you could end up making a mint.

The phrase ‘film memorabilia’ may conjure up geeky images of Star Wars fans bidding for figurines on eBay but consider this: in November 2005 one of only four surviving promotional posters by Heinz Schulz-Neudamm for Fritz Lang's 1927 science fiction film Metropolis was bought from the Reel Poster Gallery for a world record price of $690,000 (£397,762). The importance of the film’s look to Modernism and the way it was captured by Schulz-Neudamm make it a significant piece of art by most measures and the outrageous price tag really clinches the deal. So how can you get into the world of film memorabilia as art?

Art from images
There are certain poster painters and designers whose work people specifically collect for it value as art. These include Saul Bass with the poster for Alfred Hitchcock’s ‘Vertigo’ that used stylised imagery. Other film franchises seem inextricably linked with the work of a single artist such as Robert E. McGinnis’ illustrations for James Bond, which ran from ‘Thunderball’ to ‘The Man With The Golden Gun’.

Then there are the photorealists who take still images from the film and paint illustrative montages based on these images for promotional posters. Renato Cesaro used this technique in the 1950’s in posters for ‘The Magnificent Seven’, ‘Gone With The Wind’ and ‘Le Dolce Vita’. This process was updated for a new generation of filmmakers by Bob Peak. The disembodied faces of Martin Sheen and Marlon Brando shot for the moody climax of ‘Apocalypse Now’ are used by Bob Peak for his famous poster montage. James Caan in ‘Rollerball’ was similarly immortalised by Peak.

The Market
"Like comics, film posters are very lucrative ways of making money. Big businesses have moved into it because these are really good investments. They are never going to lose value and some go up in leaps and bounds. It’s just like playing any market," says Dick Fiddy, TV Consultant for the British Film Institute and a collector of TV memorabilia.

But assuming you don’t want to invest heavily in MGM this year, how can you start a movie memorabilia collection? "If you are going to get into it you should buy two of everything. One that you can sell or use to barter and one to keep for your own personal collection," advises Fiddy.

Most of the trading in collectables happens on the net. The fact that local film distributors decide on the imagery that will sell a film in the local market means that Japanese film posters, for instance are very different from the UK’s.

"Posters in the US are printed in portrait where as ours our landscape and because of that there’s a big market in the States for British posters. It feeds the market on both sides of the planet," says Fiddy.

Collectable posters can come from unexpected places too. "There’s a massive market for Polish posters because they’re so off the wall. They’re dark, gothic and bloody and smack of art a lot more than some of our stuff does which is a lot more linear."

The Artefacts
Of course there’s more to memorabilia than posters. Costumes and props are regularly auctioned off at charity events, from where they enter the open market and are traded around the world. And Fiddy’s favourite artefact? "I’ve got something from Minder which I spotted at a car boot sale and I’ve never seen anywhere else: it’s an Arthur Daley tax disc, which I later got George Cole to sign."

As ever eBay remains a bazaar of all things collectable. Marc Sinclair, founder member of the Dr Who Appreciation Society has used eBay to buy props from the Dr Who TV series including the sonic screwdriver and even the famous blue Police Box.

The Viewing Gallery
Of course, you don’t have to buy this film art to enjoy it. The Reel Art Gallery in London has collected hundreds of thousands of film posters. The collection is available for hire but is also the subject of a whole series of books. Movie memorabilia collections are also auctioned at Sotheby’s and other houses, which produce catalogues which can themselves become collectors’ items.

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