PEACH THIEF

Original British 30 inch x 40 inch Quad Poster for the 1964 Vulo Radev Bulgarian Drama THE PEACH THIEF (KRADETSUT NA PRASKOVI), based on the story by Emilian Stanev and starring Nevena Kokanova, Rade Markovic, Mikhail Mikhaylov, Vasil Vachev, Naum Shopov, Georgi Georgiev and Ivan Bratanov plus Jean Renoir’s BOUDU.

The wife of a Bulgarian POW camp’s warden falls in love with a Serbian prisoner at the end of World War I.

The poster art is by Peter Strausfeld. Strausfeld was interned in the Isle of Man at the Onchan Internment Camp during the War where he met the Austrian producer George Hoellering. In 1947 Hoellering opened the Academy Cinema on Oxford Street and invited Strausfeld to produce some posters for the cinema which he did in wood and lino-cuts till his death in 1980.

The Academy Cinema, built in 1913, was saved from conversion to a shopping arcade in 1928 by Elsie Cohen of the original Film Society, who proceeded to run it as an arthouse which is how it was ran till it’s closure in 1986.

The posters became a London landmark, in fact very few were used outside of London, resulting in very small print runs of 3-500.

Printed by The Westminster Press, London W.9.

The poster is in fine unfolded (rolled) condition.