It has been a while coming, but with summer finally arriving here are a few pointers for upcoming comics festivals on the Continent for the coming month or so. We’ve just had the 31st edition of the Arctic Comics Festival in Kemi, Finland, where Christophe Blain was the guest of honour. Also present were tintinologist Reijo Valta, Ola Skogäng (Sweden), literary cartoonist Maijastiina Vilenius, Disney cartoonist Kari Korhonen and more. Moving southwards down Europe and looking ahead there’s plenty more festvial goodness to look forward to.
Over the weekend of June 2nd and 3rd, the Stripdagen in Haarlem, Holland, is where it’s at. This year the main theme is comics from the Arab world, from Morocco to Qatar, with lectures, interviews and exhibitions. Other exhibitions focus on the work of Peter van Dongen, Lamelos, Rudolf Valster and Stripdagen VIP par excellence, Joost Swarte (never a bad thing to have a helping of Swarte, we think). And lots more, of course!
At the same time, the 17th edition of the Rendez-vous de la BD in Amiens, France takes place, with lots of, mostly French creators (unsurprisingly), exhibitions on the series Aquablue and Okko and on venerable satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo (still going despite the firebombing of their offices a few months ago), and on American short stories in comics format.
One week later (7th to 10th June), there’s the Internationaler Comic Salon in Erlangen, Germany. With more than 400 artists present from all over the world and an expo with no less than 150 German and international publishers, this is a great opportunity to meet all of comics in one venue. Information on exhibitions and events has not been published as yet, although you can see the shortlist for the pretigious Max und Moritz awards here on the blog.
From June 4th to 10th, the Sismics Festival d’Images in Sierre, Switzerland, has people as varied as Italian cartoonist Guido Volpi, graphic artist Terhi Ekebom, the Swish Remake collective and American-Swiss illustrator Randy DuBurke.
Finally, 16th and 17th of June are the dates for the Strasbulles festival in Strasbourg, France. Guest of Honour is Korean comic artist Kim Jung-Gi, who is as yet not really well-known beyond the world of Manwha, but hopefully this exhibition of some of his sketchwork will change that. In addition to this, this year’s guest country is Germany, with exhibitions of work by and interviews with (as yet unnamed) German authors.





























































Thu, May 24, 2012 posted by Wim
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