Ishq-e-Mamnu (Forbidden Love, 2010s) – Framed Original Lollywood Film Poster
Original "fake" film poster, framed in hand-painted wooden frame, street-salvaged from electric poles in Lahore.
Only one available.
Title: Ishq-e-Mamnu (عشق ممنوع, "Forbidden Love")
Country: Pakistan
Year: 2010s
Poster size: 30″ × 40″
Frame size: 32.5″ × 42.5″
Frame: Hand-painted yellow barn-wood with UV-resistant glass front
Condition: Vintage
Publisher: Uncredited
Original Pakistani Urdu poster for Ishq Mamnu (عشق ممنوع), a fake film fabricated during the Musharraf era and circulating into the early 2010s. This frankensteined design features the face of Veena Malik, then a rising star and later known as the first Pakistani actress to appear on India’s version of the reality TV show Big Brother, pasted onto a foreign model’s body. With buzzword-mash taglines like “Love will never die!”, “Dil totay totay ho giya”, and “Love is life,” the poster mimics the language and emotional pull of popular Turkish and Indian soap operas. It was never tied to a real film. Instead, it was part of a strategy to lure working-class men into tupped cinemas, where stitched-together reels of local B-movie scraps and foreign porn were screened under relaxed media censorship. Though it borrows its title from Aşk-ı Memnu (the Turkish megahit aired in Turkey from 2008 to 2010 and later dubbed in Urdu as Ishq-e-Mamnu on Urdu 1), this poster has no actual connection to the show. It survives as a relic of underground Pakistani cinema culture, when fantasy and softcore imagery were deployed as bait for male audiences in a collapsing theatrical circuit.
Exhibited in “Spasial Program” at SculptureCenter, New York, June 18 –July 28, 2025.
Availability: Free pickup on July 29, or worldwide shipping (price excludes shipping).
