In June, 2010 the Haarlem Comics Festival will take place for the tenth time in a row. That, and the fact that the Stichting Beeldverhaal Nederland will celeberate its 20th anniversary, calls for something special. Next to the obligatory reminiscing on previous editions, this has turned out to be a quite ambitious project which aims at giving a complete overview of the comic culture of the different countries in Eastern Europe. KOMIKS FROM THE OTHER HALF will be a large-scale exhibition, giving an overview of comics in Slavic countries throughout the 20th century. Elsewhere in Haarlem Eastern European bands will play; there will be a mini-festival of Eastern European cartoon cinema and, as you can judge from the poster (below), the complete festival get a retro-Stalinist design.
In preparation for this event, the Stichting is building a database of references about Eastern European comics on the Internet. In true Web 2.0 style, they have already made available the current list as a public Google Document. So far, they have managed to amass more than 250 links to websites of or about cartoonists, festivals, magazines and publishers from all countries in Eastern Europe. That in itself, is a thing of beauty for anyone who’s even remotely interested in comics from “the other half”.
Incidentally, this project was largely inspired by picha.nl, a similar database which aims at referencing everything there is to know about comics in Africa. Like Komiks From The Other Half, Picha.nl started out as a research project for an exhibition, but soon became a valuable resource in its own right. It provides Information on cartoonists from all African countries, along with samples of their work, as well as information on African comics magazines.
More on the Haarlem programme as it becomes available !
Wed, Dec 16, 2009
Comics and cartoons, From our Continental Correspondent