Drive, Bronson, and Only God Forgives director Nicolas Winding Refn just released a book of movie posters that he describes as “the most expensive poster book ever made of movies no one's ever heard of.” The Act of Seeing, authored by film critic Alan Jones and edited by Refn, is a deep and thoroughly researched dive into some of the most obscure visual treasures to come out of the scuzzy exploitation era of Times Square cinemas.

Nicolas Winding Refn and The Act of Seeing

Pulled from Nicolas Winding Refn’s collection of over 1,000 exploitation and sexploitation movie posters from 60’s and 70’s era Times Square cinemas, The Act of Seeing is a treasure trove of obscure movie art, loaded with titles like The Joys of Jezebel, Sex of the Future, Torture Me Kiss Me, Is The Father Black Enough? (tagline: “A racist wind blows the dust from a black man’s grave to choke the honkies to death!!!”), Run Swinger Run, Smoke of Evil, Mondo Weirdo, and She Freak.

“It took a year and a half just to dig out the research,” Refn said. “Because I didn't want reviews, I wanted facts.” This was a tricky proposition, given that many of the films in The Act of Seeing are obscure near to the point of being lost. “I would torture Alan Jones, who did all the research,” Refn told iDigitalTimes. “There were a lot of them where it was like true detective work.”

The collection that forms the basis for Refn’s Act of Seeing originated with Jimmy McDonough, a film writer known for his book on notorious sleaze director Andy Miligan, The Ghastly One. A writer for Bill Landis’ epochal grindhouse journal Sleazoid Express, McDonough was an avid collector of movie materials from the lost days of Time Square cinemas.

When Nicolas Winding Refn bought McDonough’s exploitation movie poster collection he didn’t quite know what to expect. “He shipped them over and a thousand posters just arrived. Some were in pretty bad condition and some were in pretty good condition. When you make something like a poster book you have to decide whether you want to present them as they are in their current state or do you want to present it as it was originally envisioned?”

One look at the gorgeous layout and loving reproductions in The Act of Seeing and it’s readily apparent which course Refn chose. “Going back to the origin” would, Refn hoped, make the collection feel “a little more cinematic, a little more hyper-reality.”

Relics of a more free-wheeling cinematic era, where, as Refn describes “everything was being promised to your imagination,” the posters in Act of Seeing are a far cry from what we’re used to seeing in modern cinemas. “There's nothing more boring than all these Photoshop-approved things. I mean, who wants to hang that on their wall? A lot of us use art to express who we are, and the more generic it becomes the less it speaks to us.”

Nicolas Winding Refn’s Act of Seeing, his “time capsule of sin,” is available now from FAB Press.