Yesterday the 35th edition of the Angoulême Festival, one of the most prestigious comics festivals in the world, closed its doors after four days of mayhem. I don’t know yet whether the festival itself was a hit, because, much to my chagrin, I wasn’t able to attend this year. In any case, a quick look at this year’s palmares is quite promising.
The Grand Prix of the City of Angoulême, which can be seen as a sign of recognition for the importance and overall excellence of a particular cartoonist’s work and career, was presented to the cartoonist duo Philippe Dupuy and Charles Berberian, well-known for their Monsieur Jean series and also well-known to English language readers for various contributions to Drawn & Quarterly. For over twenty years they have worked together in a very unusual way, disregarding the traditional opposition between artist and writer. Dupuy and Berberian are both artists and writers – they both are complete cartoonists in their own right and have worked solo (in fact Dupuy has a new solo work, Haunted, due from D&Q this spring) but mostly they collaborate together. However, they are not only awarded the Grand Prix for this original way of working, but also for their very strong, tight and very personal oeuvre, which can be read as a remarkably correct chronicle of modern-day city life.
(Dupuy and Berberian’s Get a Life, published by Drawn and Quarterly)
The winner of the Fauve D’Or, the award for the best album, was a surprise, at least for me. It was presented to Australian artist Shaun Tan for his book “The Arrival” (published in French as “Là Où Vont Nos Pères”), a migrant story told as a series of wordless images that might seem to come from a long forgotten time. It tells a story of a man who arrives in a strange and unknown country and finds himself amidst strange customs, even weirder animals, curious floating objects and indecipherable languages. On his quest for a place to live and work to stay alive, he is helped by strangers who each have their own stories of struggle and survival. Tan is awarded the prize for the way in which he presented the very topical theme of immigration in a metaphorical way, allowing any reader to identify with the migrant and his ordeals, and experiencing first hand what it means to try and fin a new life in a totally different culture.
(cover to Kiki De Montparnasse by Catel and Bocquet, published Casterman)
Other lucky winners were Catel and Bocquet for their biography of Kiki De Montparnasse (Prix Essentiel Fnac SNCF), Isabelle Pralong with “L’Elephant” (Essentiel Révélation), Moomin by Tove Jansson (Prix Patrimoine, and about time too), Philippe Buchet and Jean-David Morvan, who won the Essentiel Jeunesse with the tenth episode of their science fiction series Silage, Jul with the Guide Du Moutard (Prix Goscinny) and finally Turkey Comix, who won the prize for Best Alternative Comic. Finally, five runners-up for Best Album were nominated Essentiels D’ Angoulême; they include Rutu Modan’s Exit Wounds (highly recommended), Jean Regnaud and Emile Bravo’s Ma Maman Est En Amérique, Pascal Rabate and David Prudhomme’s La Marie En Plastique, Frederik Peeters and Pierre Dragon’s R.G. (a really realistic police comic) and Trois Ombres by Cyril Pedrosa.
Mon, Jan 28, 2008
Awards, Comics and cartoons, Conventions and events, From our Continental Correspondent