Lennon’s Poster
2012 · 3m · Reino Unido
Directed by Joe Fellows, Nick Esdaile
Genres: biography, documentary
Tones: contemplative, tender
Peter Dean and a team of experts recreate, using traditional wood engraving and letterpress methods, the Pablo Fanque circus poster that inspired John Lennon's Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Everyone expects a Beatles doc to genuflect at the altar of genius; instead this quietly obliterates the myth by proving the poster was the real artifact all along—the song's just fanfare for wood and ink.
A formally restrained meditation on artistic lineage and material craft: the film trusts letterpress and engraving to speak their own language, situating Lennon not as origin but as reader in a centuries-old tradition of visual labor.
The decision to let the hands—the actual carving, pressing, pulling—carry the whole narrative is what does it; no voiceover mystique, just the specific friction of chisel on wood that makes the Fanque poster's pull on Lennon suddenly, physically legible.