Our Story: more than 60 years alongside Italian cinemas

For over sixty years, S.A.C. (Servizi Ausiliari Cinema) wrote an important chapter in the history of Italian cinema, distributing advertising materials and film prints (and later digital copies) to every movie theater on behalf of the major Italian and international distributors. This activity came to an end in January 2020, but it left behind an invaluable cultural legacy: the Webphoto.it / Movie.it archive, built over decades by photographing and digitizing every poster, lobby card, and photo stills sent to cinemas.

In 2003, SAC’s owners founded Webphoto, a company dedicated specifically to managing and enhancing this vast archive of cinematic imagery and the precious rights acquired over time from master Italian poster artists. In 2024, this evolutionary journey culminated in Webphoto’s incorporation into SAC, giving rise to SacWebphoto: a single entity responsible for creating this website.

This new project, developed in collaboration with the Cineteca di Bologna, is driven by a deep and genuine passion for cinema and for vintage movie posters artworks that deserve not only to be preserved, but celebrated, elevated, and made accessible to future generations.

SacWebphoto is not simply an archive. It is a declaration of love for an extraordinary form of art that has endured for decades, leaving an indelible mark on Italy’s collective memory and on the hearts of film enthusiasts around the world.

Every day, with dedication, we work to recover, restore, and make accessible these true graphic masterpieces. Our work goes far beyond collecting images: we care for every detail, study the history of each piece, research the original techniques, and bring back to life stunning artworks created from posters worn down by time. Our ambitious goal is to build a cultural bridge between past and future, fostering an ongoing dialogue between the great tradition of Italian poster masters and a new generation of film lovers, art collectors, and admirers of contemporary visual culture.

The Golden Age: when Italy led the world in film poster art

Between the 1940s and the 1980s, Italy experienced what is now recognized as the golden age of movie posters. In those unforgettable decades, Italian posters were universally acknowledged as the most beautiful, original, and artistically refined in the world.

They were not simple mechanical reproductions or adaptations of foreign artwork, but genuine artistic reinterpretations. Each poster stemmed from the sensitivity and talent of a poster artist who armed with brushes, color palettes, and above all extraordinary creative intuition could translate the deepest essence of a film into a powerful, evocative, symbolically rich image.

It was a fully artisanal craft: creative, emotional, one of a kind. The Italian movie poster became an autonomous work of art, capable of communicating even outside its original cinematic context, turning into a prized collectible and an important historical record.

Our mission today

SacWebphoto celebrates and preserves that unique era, giving today’s audiences the extraordinary opportunity to rediscover these forgotten visual treasures and fully appreciate their historical, cultural, and artistic significance. Through state of the art technology and specialized expertise in digital restoration, we bring back to life masterpieces that risked being lost, revealing colors and details that printing techniques of the time could not capture.

Our work is more than a business: it is a cultural mission that we carry out with passion, skill, and deep respect for the artistic heritage in our care. Every restored poster is a small piece of Italian history brought back to life, ready to move and inspire once again.