Tuesday, January 30, 2007

Angouleme

After a horrible long travel Im back from the international Comicfestival in Angouleme. After it took me 18 hours to travel back from Anouleme to Graz with the train. Never again. There where so many difficulties and decays – next time I take the plane, pay a bit more but spare myself the trouble and the exhaustion of a long train travel. I dont want to know how I smelled torwards the ending......

Anyway, the Comicfestival: or lets say the “B.D. Angouleme”. B.D. stands for « bande désignée », which means «gezeichnetes Band ». That shows imidiately how differnt the French look at the medium comic – France and Belgium accepts the Comic as an art and literary form.

Here you see the masses moving trough the halls of the festival. People from every age where to be met at the festival, since the comic for adults is very big in France.

Angouleme is a bautiful little french town in the south west od France, 3 hours by fast train from Paris. Its situated around a hill and contains a lot of beautiful old buildings.

The walls in Angouleme are paintings with comics from the french comicscene.


The festival had a couple of locations: The Hall of Editors, which was a gigantic space where all the french publishers presented their newest publications and where famous artists signed and drew artwork for fans for hous and hous. Some people just go to the festival to stand in queues the whole day, to collect original art from the comicartists.

Another location was the Center of « bande désignée “, which contained a couple of nice exhibition, a big comic libary and shop and a cafe with a gay waiter.

There was the “Franquin” center (where discussions, mostly in french, took place and a small exhibition. The famous “Tintin” (Tim und Struppi) inventor Herge had his own exhibition which wasnt that good.

Characters from comics and from the Jim Wooldring exhibition at the bottom.


In gerneral im a bit dissapointed. I don’t know what I expected. But something else. First of all, everything was in french, there wasnt even an English program, even tough this festival is supposed to be international and has a lot of international guests.

Then, the hall of editors was constantly filled up with gigantic queues of people who wanted original drawings. All the time, the way was blocked by them. Also, the ticket for the festival costs 13 Euros, and I dont udnerstand why to pay that money if you go inside the halls and spend money for comics again. You pay money to spend money...thats kind of sick, especially for the comic industry.

This are Flo and Piwi, who draw comics too and with whom I visited the festival with.


The city of Angouleme, filled with comic-maniacs.


On my way back home I spend a couple of hours in Paris and visited the Louvre. This bird flew directly into my camera.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Great resource. keep it up!!Thanks a lot for interesting discussion, I found a lot of useful information!With the best regards!
Frank

queenmob said...

Frank! Who are you? Im curiouuus!

Felix said...

Nice report about a not so nice festival :). Can't be that bad when you were in Paris as well ;). The thing about the French remembers me of my corridor, I guess that's how France is.

Anonymous said...

Hallo! ;)
oh... what sick newz!
what do U consider about it?

Anonymous said...

i love your blog, you goddamn crazy cthulhuean!
VERY cool walls in angouleme!!!
we also should do that in graz!

:-)
j

ps: pleeeaaase write something in http://xenopankraten.bboard.de
the only reason to get interested in politics again! hee hee hee!

:-))))

Anonymous said...

Helloooo

Interesting point on how the French & Belgians perceive comics - I guess that's why it's embedded in the language! I went along to a small exhibition in Belgium about Tintin and it feels as though the comics are such a national institution there.

Hope things are going well in your new house-share!

Sally

Arale Norimaki said...

Heyyy!! I guess that after such a report I don't feel so envious about you going to Angoulême. After all, maybe Coruña's International Comic Festival is not so bad (at least it's free to get everywhere).
Good luck with your diplom-arbeit!!
I'm really poor so I don't know about my chances of going to Austria, but it looks pretty difficult...

queenmob said...

@ sal
good to hear from you! It's great that youve been in Belgium. Its, besides France, one of the main comic counties.