Gianluca Costantini kindly sends us some information on October’s Komikazen festival which will take place in the beautiful environs of Ravenna in Italy from October 12th and 13th (with exhibitions running right to the 9th of December), which looks like it is gearing up to be a major event celebrating the variety and imagination of European comics, their creators and the editors and publishers who do so much to actually get them noticed by readers and into stores (and how we wish we got more of it translated and sold here in the UK too). From the official press release:
“On Friday, the 12th of October, the 3rd International Festival of Reality Comics will open with a workshop involving authors and promoters coming from all over Europe. Authors of well-known magazines like Strapazin (Switzerland), Babel (Athens), Glomp (Finland), Chili Com Carne (Portugal) and new self-productions coming from new members of the EU, like Romania, active with the magazine Hard Comics and with various festivals, will participate at the meeting at the Albergo Cappello in Ravenna. For the first time in Italy, there will be the young authors of Stripoteka, a Bosnian collective based in Sarajevo. It will be a very important day to closely get to know stories and projects of European Magazines editors and to organize a common plan for the future (authors exchange, exhibitions…).”
(cover to Stripburger’s Honey Talks collection)
Also during the festival there will be the opening of a collective exhibition entitled “European Comics Cartography” at the Museo Nazionale of Ravenna, which boasts work from some 50 creators from the invited magazines, while another exhibition, Honey Talks, organised by the highly-regarded team from Stripburger, offers up artwork from some top creators, including Anke Feuchtenberger, Danijel Zezelj, Rutu Modan and Matthias Lehmann among others (now that is an exhibit I wouldn’t mind seeing myself). Ho Che Anderson, creator of the acclaimed biographical work ‘King‘ will be appearing as an Italian version of the book is produced and the GAER (Giovani Artisti dell’Emilia Romagna) awards will be given out. In a nice touch the comics festival will also intersect with a local Ravenna festival and the two will interact, with artists going round town drawing and showing videos. All in in all it sounds like a great festival and a good way of highlighting some of the great comics creations coming out of Europe which normally we only see a fraction of in the English language presses (thank goodness for publishers like Fantagraphics and Drawn & Quarterly for publishing at least some of them). Full details can be found on the official website.
Related posts:
- From our continental correspondent – festival news With summer only half-way, it might be the right time...
- Birmingham/British International Comics Show – now with added arts council backing…. Shane Chebsey emailed us earlier this week with the...
- Timeframes: Narrative and Sequence in Comics Via Emma Vieceli comes a heads-up on some interesting comics...
- Comics at the Cheltenham Literature Festival 2009 Oh, it’s a lovely world we live in when...
- 2D Festival this weekend 2D, Northern Ireland’s comics festival, is underway this weekend, centred...
Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.
September 30th, 2007 at 11:35 am
I just wanted to thank you for the promo of Komikazen festival and subsequently of our initiative. A quick comment though: Stripopeka is spelled with two p’s, “Stripoteka” is a comic book magazine from Serbia. Keep up the good work!