The Alliance Française de Suva, a non-profit organisation offering the local people of Suva the chance to learn French, held its first comic book festival this week and last, from February 11-20.
The cultural centre opened its doors to comic enthusiasts all around Suva, inviting local artists, collectors and comic book fans to drop by and celebrate the creativity and diversity of graphic art. It is hoped that a culture of comic will be launched in Suva through this event by giving local comic lovers the chance to network with one another and build a comic book community.
Alliance Française director Eric Davias commented: “We are extremely excited to try and bring the first comic festival to Fiji and we also share the passion for the professional development of this genre.”
The launch of the comic book festival comes two weeks after the annual Angoulême Festival in France which sees thousands of comic book artists, fanatics, publishers and professionals from all around Europe gather in France to exhibit their work and celebrate the success of comic strips/books as a recognised art form. It is the third largest comic book festival in the world and is made up of exhibitions, contests and seminars. The event also gives out awards for cartooning with categories such as “Best Album” and “Lifetime Achievement Award”.
The exhibition at the Alliance Française offered visitors an insight into the history, production and distribution of comic books worldwide, covering styles from Europe, Asia and America.
The first section featured posters which explained that the history of illustration dates back to ancient Egyptian times through their use of hieroglyphics. It also gives visitors a glimpse of the first ever comic drawing, History of Mr. Albert by the artist Rodolf Topfer produced in 1862.
The second section answered the question “What is a comic?” by explaining that comics are sequential art, pictures that are drawn in a specific order thereby offering a logical story that, with or without words, can be interpreted by the reader. The poster featured images from the work of Scott McCloud, whose collections of books explore the creation and reinvention of comics, providing a detailed explanation of how a comic strip starts its journey from simple images to full-length book.
Mr Davias explained how important it is for readers to infer detail, commenting that the sections of white space between comic strips are a place reserved for the reader to really use their imagination to piece together the cartoons, drawing their own meaning from the pictures and words. In this respect, comic strips can be read over and over again and the reader will arrive at a different conclusion every time. As Mr Davias put it, comics are read at “your own rhythm”.
The use of realism and abstraction is also central to comic strips and is manipulated by artists to either distance their work from reality or, in the case of many adult comic books, make realism central to their work. It was surprising to learn of the success of adult comic books.
As well as children’s comic books, the exhibition also provided examples of adult comic books such as Ode to Kirihito by Osamu Tezuka which uses a lot violence in order to give a true portrayal of reality giving the comic book moral undertones that are a lot heavier than those used in children’s comic books.
The final section of the exhibition provided visitors with a clearer distinction between popular comic book formats classify the genre into European Style in the second half of the twentieth century, American style from 1939 onwards and the current Japanese style known as Manga.
Photos of popular comics such as Tintin and Marvel Avengers decorated the walls as well as the distinct styles of Manga who create comics that target boys, girls and adults separately. Attention is also given to the growing number of movies that are now being made from comic books with Marvel and Manga offering the greatest number of movie adaptations.
As well as the exhibition, the Alliance Française offered drawing workshops ran by local artists and cartoonists to encourage rookies and experienced artists the chance to practise and improve their artistry.
Joseph Lavulo, a lecturer in graphic design at Fiji National University, led a workshop with students from Suva Grammar School during the first few days of the exhibitions opening.
In addition students from pods Seven and Eight of the Multiple Intelligence School dropped by for a guided tour with Mr Davias. In school, the children had been investigating different forms of written expression, looking beyond the standard novel form.
The comic book exhibition provided a perfect opportunity for the students to learn more about this alternative written art form as a way of communicating ideas and beliefs to a readership. Mr Davias encouraged the students to return to the cultural centre with their parents and become members so that they could have access to more comic books and other resources such as DVDs and language lessons.
The staff of Alliance Française are very optimistic about the future of the exhibition, commenting that they wish for it to become an annual event, growing each year to attract the attention of more cartoonists and hopeful artists in order to expand the comic culture in Fiji.
