Angouleme Gets Underway in France



The ActuaBD.com article on the first morning of the Festival International de la bd d'Angouleme, one of the world's largest and most important gatherings of its type, provides an entertaining laundry list of goings-on: good weather for a change (after two years of snow), a visit by the Cultural Minister and the exhibits visited, a local mayoral race, continued infrastructure rehabilitation and improvement, how the show is marked by changes in the show's administrative set-up, a local strike, and the Smurfs.

This looks like a site worth a bookmark in terms of an easy interface for video, photo and written Angouleme coverage.

On the occasion of the Angouleme Festival getting underway, an article in Le Soir looks at the state of sales for BD, 2007, stressing a point that while various manga titles have launched an assault on the sales charts in terms of the frequency of publication, individual book to individual book the stalwarts of French-language publishing still do very well.

Who will be this year's Grand Prix winner? If I'm remember correctly, the usual pattern suggests older French-language industry guy. Could they go for an English-language artist for the first time since 1999? Who's the right age? Simmonds? Shelton? Feiffer?

Admittedly, I have no idea what I'm talking about, but guessing wildly is sort of fun. I do remember that people had been pushing for Jose Munoz for a couple of years before he won it, and I'm not aware of anyone with that kind of minority support in recent years that could be said is ready to go over the top. As far as I know there's not an obvious, perceived need for the Festival to connect to a certain readership that might drive the vote, either. Could they go with a manga-ka? Except for maybe Georges Wolinski, most of the recent selections are the kind where your guess is wrong but you kind of instantly get what they're going after.

above: Luciano Bottaro's art is on display in one of the main exhibits this year, and was visited by the French Cultural minister this morning
 
posted 9:10 am PST | Permalink
 

---

 
Daily Blog Archives
November 2019
October 2019
September 2019
August 2019
July 2019
 
Full Archives