Angouleme Festival 2009 Kicks Off With Publicity, Controversy and Dogged Hope

Today marks the first day of the Festival International de la Bande Dessinee, known to you and me and most folks, I think, by the French town in which it's held: "Angouleme," or "The Angouleme Festival." A number of North American cartoonists will be making appearances over there during the weekend, including James Kochalka, Dan Clowes, Chris Ware and Adrian Tomine. We should have a full preview up by Bart Beaty in a few minutes, as well as anything he sends me from the Festival on his cellphone that I'm around to receive.

I'm going to be speaking off the top of my head for a second in deference to Bart's more knowledgeable piece, but I think there are a few festival-type news stories to track. The health of the festival given a worldwide economic crisis should be an issue -- my guess is that the crowds will exceed the pessimists and everyone will appreciate the experience a bit more, but let's see. There was a general strike in France that may have an effect on first-day attendance and some of the pros getting from Paris to Angouleme. If I'm reading this correctly, there were a bit of controversy over what to show at the South African comics exhibit. I think there are also high expectations for the show given that Dupuy and Berberian are co-presidents and therefore had a hand in planning most of the exhibits. Their own exhibit should be awesome, too. The panels sound kind of awesome, with a lot of one-on-one interviews between cartoonists that I'd kill to see and I wish more people would emulate here.

To supplement our coverage, the main festival site is here. Here's a first report from ActuaBD.com. Best of all, perhaps is a YouTube Channel from FNAC devoted to the festival that's already stuffed with 17 videos.
 
posted 7:15 am PST | Permalink
 

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