At a Beirut cultural centre, Lebanese film buff is exhibiting vintage film posters from his collection that show off a lost art, but also offer insight into decades of Western cliches of the Arab world.
Abu Jawdeh first began collecting posters in his teens, starting with films starring American actors Steve McQueen and Clint Eastwood.
Visiting old cinemas in Lebanon and across the region, he unearthed a world of images -- for more foreign films, but also thousands of prints advertising films from the Arab world.
Some of his finds in this rare collection date back to 1930s Egypt or Lebanon in the late 1950s.
Today he owns some 20,000 posters, stacked up to the ceiling at his publishing house, their bright colors shielded from the sunlight.
