Tehran's cinema district ran on paper. A gouache painting of the star went to the litho house, the title was drawn by hand because Persian movable type of the period was context-sensitive and unreliable, and the sheet came back as flat ink — orange against turquoise, magenta laid over red, no gradient anywhere between two colours.

Over ninety-five percent of these posters are star-oriented: one head, breaking the frame, and the name that sold the ticket. Everything else — diagonal title bands, inset action vignettes, credits jammed at the foot — crowds in around it. The system reads right to left, and the Persian leads.