Picks of the Week
The picks of the week from around the web.
Hype: OCX 08 & Tegneseriens Dramaturgi
Lest you’d missed it, it is festival season. So here’s another round of hype. This time for the newly initiated Oslo Comix Expo, which was held for the first time last year. It was a considerable success — a really pleasant and unpretentious, but still ambitious and well-organised little festival (read more here and here). This year it will be held on May 23-24 and only promises to get better. Amongst the announced guests we find Warren Ellis, Killoffer, Igort, Johnny Ryan, Martin Kellerman and the Stripburger collective.
The official programme hasn’t been announced, but an ancillary special arrangement has: on May 21-23, a workshop on the dramaturgy of comics, with special focus on the exchange between writing for film and comics, will be held at the Oslo Cinemateque (Filmens hus) in Oslo. Amongst the instructors will be a number of the above-mentioned comics luminaries: Killoffer, Igort and Warren Ellis.
To join, send an email with a CV and a short synopsis to a story (max. 3 pages) to kurs@nfl.no, marked “TEGNESERIE-VÆRKSTED.” More information (in Norwegian) here and here. And keep an eye on the OCX site for updates! Artwork by Igort.
Hype: Stripdagen Haarlem
Stripdagen in Haarlem has long been known as one of the best small comics festivals in Europe, consistently offering quality programming and notable international guests. This year’s festival, which runs from June 6-8, looks to be no different, with a group exhibition of artists from the collectives FRMK, La Cinquiène couche and La Mycose being the central attraction announced so far.
Full disclosure: I’m in the nominating jury for the so-called VPRO Grand Prize, for which Chris Ware, Naoki Urasawa and Dominique Goblet have been singled out. The winner will be selected by an independent committee of some hundred Dutch and Belgian comics experts.
Additionally, it has been announced that the nominees for the national prize, the so-called Hoogste Prijs, are Hanco Kolk, Peter de Wit and Marcel Ruijters. The winner will be chosen by the same committee. Also, the VPRO debut prize will be given to Randall C.
Go, if you can!
Images from Goblet’s Faire semblant c’est mentir, Ware’s 2007 Thanksgiving covers for the New Yorker and Urasawa’s Monster.
Re: Danmark hægtet af III: Komiks.dk
Matthias Wivels og overtegnedes indlæg i Strip!, Danmark hægtet af, har afstedkommet endnu en reaktion (som efterfølgende besvares behørigt af yours truly) – denne gang fra Komiks.dk’s formand Mads Bluhm, der skriver:
Vi har fra Komiks.dks side fulgt den omfattende debat, som er opblomstret på henholdsvis metabunker.dk og Seriejournalen.dk som følge af en række artikler i magasinet Strip!
Vi synes langt hen ad vejen, at det har været en god og konstruktiv debat, men vi kan ikke sige os fri for at være lidt forundrede over påstanden om, at Komiks.dk ikke skulle have nogen klar vision.
Komiks.dks vision er at vise alle facetter af tegneseriekulturen, både det kommercielle og vidtfavnende samt avantgarden og det mere nicheprægede. Vi ønsker at afspejle alle aspekter af kunstformen og vise, at tegneserier spænder lige fra underholdende striber og hæfter til tankevækkende fortællinger, grafiske romaner og skæve kunstneriske rammebrydere. Men hvis man forstår “vision” som en målsætning om at presse tegneserien i en bestemt retning, så er det ikke vores bord.
Hype: Komiks.dk
Between May 31st and June 1st, the third installment of the International Danish Comics Festival, Komiks.dk, will take place in Copenhagen. Its programme is broad and truly international in scope, with guests ranging from the French veterans Pierre Christin and Jean-Claude Mézières (Valerian) and a couple of the more interesting names in American mainstream comics, Duncan Fegredo (Hellboy) and Sean Phillips (Criminal), to such modern masters as David B. (Epileptic) and Martin tom Dieck (Hundert Ansichten der Speicherstadt). And just announced: two mangaka, Kouhei Nishino and Tsugumi Nishino (Cybermanga) — the first time Japanese cartoonists visit Denmark in an official context.
After the successful first festival, in 2004, this event quickly became THE comics event in Denmark, and the second time around only served to consolidate that position, despite a certain amount of criticism for lack of focus and critical attention to contemporary comics from certain parts of the comics community, including ourselves (ie. Rackham). This time around, the organisers have attempted to address the problems of the earlier festivals as best they could and the result is an impressive programme, remarkably inclusive, while still generally maintaining a high level of quality.
Full disclosure: yours truly is on the festival jury and will be participating in the programming. Still, don’t let that hinder you from going. It’s going to be a great time, and — I’m sure — proof that Danish comics culture is still alive, despite what one might otherwise think. I’m psyched already!
Komiks.dk 2008: Full guest list. Rackham‘s reports from the 2004 and 2006 festivals (in Danish), pictures from 2004 and 2006. Poster by Teddy Kristiansen.
Hype: Portfolio Review på Komiks.dk
Henrik Rehr har sendt mig denne meddelelse om et af de nye, konstruktive tiltag på den kommende danske tegneseriefestival Komiks.dk, om hvilken der kommer mere senere:
Få en professionel vurdering af dine evner som tegneserietegner!
En lang række af Danmarks førende udgivere og udførende inden for tegneseriemediet, står parat til at give DIG et ord med på vejen. Inspiration, konstruktiv kritik, ideer og forslag til hvordan du kommer videre og om du har en chance på markedet. I hvert fald får du nu en enestående chance for at go one-on-one med folk der ved hvad de taler om : og om hvad DU har af muligheder.
Du kan se hvem du har mulighed for at snakke med på oversigten herunder. Du SKAL bestille tid i forvejen : ellers er der gode chancer for at gå forgæves. Medmindre andet er angivet får man 10 minutter : så find ud af PRÆCIS hvornår du har tid. Tænk bl.a. på om der er andre ting på Komiks.dk-programmet du ikke vil gå glip af. Du bestiller tid ved at sende en mail til: drk@idworks.dk, emne: Port Rev. Skriv dit navn, og hvem du vil tale med og PRÆCIS hvornår du kommer. Efterhånden som tiderne bliver optaget vil oversigten blive opdateret.
Picks of the Week
The picks of the week from around the web.
Bleed Runner — Updated!
The long-awaited Blade Runner — The Final Cut, which was released last autumn in a new transfer in digital format, is in many ways a model example of how to restore and update a classic film. It contains none of the ill-advised anachronisms seen in such projects as the remastered Star Wars movies, and neither has the director tampered insensitively with his assertive yet delicate masterpiece the way Francis Ford Coppola did with Apocalypse Now: Redux. The tweaks to the edit mostly enhance rather than impair the movie, while the corrections of continuity gaffes and shots deemed inadequate have been carried out with care and do not disrupt the experience of the film.
Unfortunately, however, the director and restorers have been unable to resist the temptation of adjusting the picture to fit what one presumes is their 21st-century notion of what an edgy SF film should look like. The vivid colour of the original, that glorious early 80s pastel and neon-sheen overseen by the late, great director of photography Jordan Cronenweth, has been bled from of the Final Cut to leave us with the bleak, desaturated ‘blue steel’ look pioneered by James Cameron in the 90s and now ubiquitous in contemporary Hollywood action films, including those of Blade Runner director Ridley Scott.
Hype: Warren Craghead — “Petals, a Spell”
Warren Craghead, one of the most interesting and innovative cartoonists working the boundaries of the medium today, has just released an “origami comic” to his website for free! Go, download the PDF, print it, and fold along the dotted lines. And while you’re at it, go check out these postcards by him. What, exactly, are you waiting for, again?
The First Victim of War
“The strategic target remains our population… We can lose people day in and day out, but they’re never going to beat our military. What they can and will do if they can is strip away our support. And you guys can help us not let that happen.”
— General Conway, Director of Operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff
If you only read one news article this week, make it this exposé on the Pentagon propaganda programme in support of the war in Iraq, written by David Barstow and just published by the New York Times. It brilliantly details how “Internal Pentagon documents repeatedly refer to the military analysts as “message force multipliers” or “surrogates” who could be counted on to deliver administration “themes and messages” to millions of Americans “in the form of their own opinions”, relying amongst other things on surprisingly candid accounts by many of these analysts themselves. It especially focuses on the Government countermeasures undertaken to discredit the 2006 so-called “Generals Revolt” for then Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to step down.
This is simply shocking reading. Not only for the utterly cynical, callous and irresponsible approach to public office of Rumsfeld evidenced by his handling of this insidious propaganda programme, but for the major American media’s apparent utter lack of critical vetting of by these “independent analysts”, several of whom doubled as military contractors with the government, consistently relying on them for information about the war effort for years on end. We all know that Fox News has basically acted as the Fourth Branch of the Bush Government over the last 7 years, but the success of this propaganda effort reaches way beyond that, extending to all the major networks. A bleak picture.
Photo montage from the New York Times.