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Gathering of Authors, workshops and performances from 8th to 10th October
Exhibitions until 7th November 2010
Ravenna – Various venues
http://www.komikazenfestival.org/

The sixth edition of the Komikazen International Reality Comic Festival following tradition presents major previews from internationally accredited authors until now unpublished in Italy, together with the big names of the world of comics who are well-known to the Italian public.

Created with the aim of researching and investigating the relationships between the presentation of reality and graphic literature, Komikazen does not disappoint enthusiasts of the ninth art thirsting for something new and for meaningful face-to-face meetings with the authors. In addition to being occasions for reflecting and gaining deeper insights, there will also be exhibitions of high quality art and workshops with guest authors both for the curious and for professionals.

In the setting of MAR – the city’s Museum of Art – there will be an exhibition with originals from the talented young Frenchman Maximilien Le Roy: just 24 years old, he has already published six volumes, among them the major work dedicated to Nietzsche on the text by the philosopher Michel Onfray. He is also an expert in comic journalism and works with the photographer Maxence Emery, who collaborated with him on the important trilogy on the Israeli – Palestinian conflict (Faire le Mur, Gaza and Hosni). In particular the collective work entitled Gaza, December 2008: uscito per La Boîte à Bulles will be presented to the public. It is a book that uses comic strip, graphical art and political analysis to tell the story of the operation Cast Lead in real time, but also to present the conflict in a new form.
From Spain there will be Pablo Auladell, illustrator of a comic script by Felipe H. Cava, of Soy mi sueño, nomination of the best illustrator award at the Salon de Comic of Barcelona in 2009 and set in the Second World War. It is a work that achieves the poetic level of a metaphor for the rise and fall of a Europe that was staring into the abyss. A master illustrator who visualises with oneiric precision the text of the Spanish scriptwriter already a guest at the first edition of the festival who, with his usual mastery, pits himself against the difficult theme of the recovery of memory. Auladell’s illustrated book Isis, was published in Italy by Orecchio Acerbo.
Instead, guest of honour at the exhibition of the Teatro Rasi is the Italian drawer Igort, who will present for the first time in Italy the storyboard of his new book Quaderni ucraini. Memorie dal tempo dell'URSS, published in Italy by Mondadori.
There will also be an important meeting with an artist who goes beyond the realms of the comic, that is Apostolos Doxiadis, author of the best seller Lo zio Petros e la congettura di Goldbach, but who created the screenplay of Logicomix, another publishing success recently released also in Italy by Guanda.
But Komikazen is a centre, not merely of knowledge, of deeper insights and reflections, but also of production: the participants are young designers from Emilia Romagna, from among whom Komikazen will make its selection with the prize of the publication of a book. For the fourth year a winner will be chosen, giving a designer under 35 the opportunity to produce a book to be published by Comma 22. There will also be the presentation of the volume of the 2009 winner, Pietro Scarnera, that deals with an autobiographical matter of a highly delicate ethical nature, that is his perception of his father's life in a vegetative state from 2003 to 2008. From notebooks full of drawings and sketches produced during those years, he has created a delicate and tormenting volume. After the polemics surrounding the case of Eluana Englaro, the author decided not to remain silent and to tell the story of his own experience.
Scarnera's originals can be seen at Mirada's stand.

In addition to the workshops and the meetings, Komikazen coincides with the city's golden night and so the evening of Saturday 9th offers the possibility of enjoying the city until dawn.

Some information about the festival.
Mirada has organised extensive exhibitions and workshops with comic-strip writers such as Joe Sacco, Marjane Satrapi, Aleksandar Zograf, Danijel Zezelj, and many others. It has organised the Komikazen International Reality Comic Festival each year since 2005.
The need to 'tell it as it is' is becoming urgent in an era in which it is becoming ever more difficult to understand whether or not what we are being told is reliable and truthful.
In the world of comics, characterised through antonomasia by the patina of careless people, an imaginative source of the fantastic and absolutely unreal, the trend of real story telling is, when all is said and done, fairly old (obviously in the meaning that this adjective can have when we are speaking of this medium). The autobiographical, memoir oriented, historic and news reporting tendency has always been present and has always been ingrained in many of the grand masters of sequential art.

Komikazen is the promoter of the European and Mediterranean circuit of comic art and research of which are a part: Periscopages Association _ Rennes (France) , Babel – Atene (Greece), Comica – London (UK), Chili cum Carne - Lisbon (Portugal), Boom Festival – St. Petersburg (Russia) and La Maison du Livre – Beirut (Lebanon)
The following have been guests of Komikazen: Raul, Felipe H. Cava, Khamel Khelif, Tomaz Lavric, Nicole Schulman, Phebe Gloeckner, the Turkish comic writers of the magazine Le Man, Stripburger, Filipe Abranches, Marcos Farrajota, Le Dernier Cri, Ho Che Anderson, Stefano Ricci, Samir Harb, Federico Del Barrio, Nadim Tarazi with the Lebanese comic writers, Anke Feuchtenberger, Giuseppe Palumbo, Vittorio Giardino, Paolo Bacilieri, Dave McKean, Davide Toffolo, Carlos Trillo and Peter Kuper.

For information:

Associazione Mirada
Via Mazzini 83 Ravenna
Tel +39 0544 217359 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting +39 0544 217359 end_of_the_skype_highlighting
Mob: +39 3280709837 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting +39 3280709837 end_of_the_skype_highlighting
info@mirada.it
http://www.komikazenfestival.org/