Filibus — the question mark

The third surviving 1915 Corona Films poster for Filibus, also from the EYE Filmmuseum collection. A poster built around a question mark is a teaser in everything but name — an advertising strategy usually credited to decades later. The Italian trade was experimenting with withheld information as a selling tactic before the First World War had finished. The mark itself is doing the typographic work of an illustration; scale and placement are the entire design. Curiosity, printed at poster size, a century before anyone called it a teaser.

Maker

Unknown

Date

1915

Medium of the original

One-sheet poster

Original held by

Wikimedia Commons

Credit

Wikimedia Commons

Rights

Cleared for print

Catalogue number

PA-00835