Who writes the articles on Film on Paper?

Updated

The articles on Film on Paper are written by Sim Branaghan, author of British Film Posters: An Illustrated History. The site describes itself as a collection of over 2,000 film posters from the UK, USA, Japan, Thailand and beyond, plus articles by Branaghan — so the writing sits alongside the archive rather than being separate from it.

What that means in practice

Because the author is a film-poster historian rather than a general blogger, the articles are positioned to add background and context to the posters themselves. The archive is the core of the site; the articles are the layer that explains or expands on it.

How the two parts fit together

Element What it provides
Poster archive Over 2,000 posters, with entries covering films and releases from multiple countries
Articles Written by Sim Branaghan, author of British Film Posters: An Illustrated History
Combined effect Posters plus written background, rather than images alone

What the poster entries themselves contain

The archive entries are detailed enough to show the kind of material the articles sit alongside. For example, the Jaws Japanese program entry includes:

  • Title and AKA titles (e.g. Les dents de la mer for France)
  • Year of film, director and starring cast
  • Origin of film and genre
  • Type of poster (program), origin of poster (Japan) and year of poster
  • Designer and artist (Roger Kastel for the cover)
  • Size in inches, single-sided or double-sided status, NSS number and tagline

The entry also notes that the program was sold at Japanese screenings, that Kastel's image was originally commissioned for the paperback cover of Peter Benchley's novel, and that Universal bought the rights to use it for the poster. A separate Blades one-sheet entry follows the same structure, listing Troma as the studio behind the 1989 golfing horror film.

Why the authorship matters for readers

If you are using the site to research a specific poster, the value is in the combination: the entry gives you the cataloguing facts (size, origin, artist, year), and the articles give you the historical and design context that a bare listing would not. Knowing the author wrote a standard illustrated history of British film posters is a reasonable signal that the written material is aimed at collectors and researchers rather than casual browsing.

The site's own description does not detail individual article topics beyond stating that articles are by Branaghan, so treat the archive entries as the reliable, checkable part of each page and the articles as the contextual layer.