Seriejournalen bringer her Anna Maria Gentilis reportage fra årets Angoulême festival. Anna Maria er serieskaber, bosat i Norge og har tidligere rapporteret til Seriejournalen fra italienske tegneseriefestivaler. Dette var hendes første tur til Angoulême, hjemsted for Frankrigs største tegneseriefestival.

The town

When I arrive at the Angoulême train station the sky is grey, and the clouds seem to be very thick. While sitting in the train from Limoges is was raining hard, and the poor, winter landscape of the Charente region was desolate. There were just few houses, far from each other, and the land was covered with brown grass, softened by the rain. The cafè inside the train station is old and outdated, neither the square outside has anything interesting. So, I can say that at first sight I am pretty disappointed.

I go outside, I turn to the right, and I immediately see the big, red poster pointing to the center of the town and to the festival. It's a big colour explosion burning right in front of that grey sky. I follow the arrow, and start to ascend the road. You would remember the center of this town because of the oddity of buildings and streets, going up and down following the ground. It will be hard to walk from an exhibition to the next, and the path difficult to follow, even if you will soon recognize it, for the big red balloons hanging in big nets right over your head.

Sitting in the middle of a roundabout I will find three nice ladies, giving their welcome to the visitors. They were actually men, with big wig and Audrey Hepburn look-a-like sunglasses. I finally arrive at the Hotel de la Ville, where the welcome point is, I take my pass and then go outside to watch the outdoor Tunique Bleues exhibition. Then I reach my room, just outside the walls of the old town.

Accommodations

To find a room in Angoulême is nearly impossible. There’s just a few hotel, and they are full booked since months, so you have to find an alternative solution. Many inhabitants have then organized themselves to rent rooms in their own home, during the festival. I got in touch with someone at the festival, and they fixed me a room in a family. My room is the loft, not so big but I don’t share the toilet and have a beautiful window open on the roof. They have wireless too, and will fix me breakfast. The day after I was awaken by pigeons outside, and I was the first to see that it was snowing when I opened my eyes to the window in the roof.

Snow in Angoulême is actually not so usual, so none is especially prepared to it. Not me either. Luckily is not that cold, so it will disappear in a few hours.

Locations and exhibitions

Angoulême is a medieval town, so you have one rule to follow to organize such an event, and the rule is: change role to places. Most part of locations was not thought to work as museums, but when their duty was over they had been modified to fit this new role, bringing them back to life. When you walk outside the old town walls and going down through the avenue du Cognac, we’ll reach an iron bridge which bring us right in front of the comics museum, originally a cognac distillery, since we are in the Cognac region, and you can guess it because of the grapes carved in stone above the main entrance. The building has wide rooms, and the two interesting exhibitions are on both sides. Cent pour cent, which had its vernissage just some days earlier, gathers a hundred classic pages from famous artist newly interpreted by hundred contemporary artists, while on the other side we’ll have the possibility to see the history of the comic art, both on paper and on video.

I go back over the bridge, and walk close to a high statue of Corto Maltese, made in bronze and staring at the horizon, not bored at all for watching the river flowing day after day. Turning right we’ll encounter the Paper Museum, where it’s possible to see an exhibition of cigarette paper and some example of the Russian comic. It’s actually very special, and I am not surprised at all to see that a little section is forbidden to minors. On the other side of the street the futuristic Batiment Castro is dedicated to the student of the comics school of Angoulême. I am again surprised to see the originality of those works, and the high level of the performances. Children start to draw comics here when they fill five years, and their creativeness is guided to realize colorful comics pages.

I come back to the old center of the town, and I stop to watch comics inside the big tent on my left, Jeunes Talentes. Winners of this contest are exposing their works, very special, maybe little too much, nearly exaggerated and unreal. I climb the street passing by many restaurants and cafés, and we walk close the Monde des Collectioneurs, another big tent where is possible to search for some rare comics, or gadget, then we walk a little more until the Manga Building, a big building hosting the One Piece exhibition and many conferences about the relationship between French audience and artists and the Japan world of comics.

A little later I will stop few minutes inside the Monde des Bulles, where editors have their stands, and if one has enough patience, after waiting some time he could even receive an original drawing made on demand by one of the guests drawing live. I reach the center of the town, and go inside the main building of the town, the Hotel de Ville, to see the beautiful drawings of the comic Juge Bao, on big panels around the welcome room, and I take a look to the Saison des Flèches, set around a big american indian tent.

Inside the church of Saint Michel we can see the unofficial exhibition realized to attract attention on the living conditions of prisoners in France, and of course some comics about Jesus life. I meet the SNCF-FNAC area, where the audience have the possibility to choose which comics is going to win this year prize, and I sit there and take a look, even if to see everything I should have been there much more time. Many other little exhibitions are all around town, and a lot of them are not even included in the official program, so I am amused to discovery them.

Going away

Maybe it was for the terrible weather, or maybe because there was no cosplayers around, but I think that the french comics festival was much more quiet then the two I saw in Italy last year. Places are very small, and guests must wait in a row to see the exhibitions or a tent, and they have to walk the whole town to reach any single little place. There were just few places to buy gadgets and comics, but the big bookshop inside the comics museum is excellent, and this gave me this impression, that this exhibition is more dedicated to professionals then to normal guests, even if the fact that it's been visited by 200.000 guests seem to disagree with this impression. I leave the town saturday evening, while outside is raining hard, since my flight is leaving sunday, early in the morning, and there's not any bus or train link to the Limoges airport. I go away with this feeling inside to have lived a confused dream, in which the only clear image is that little restaurant where friday night I stopped and ate some vegetable soup and some cheese, while watching outside on the medieval road. And, of course, the pigeons singing.

Læs også Anna Marias andre reportager:

• Fumetterni 2009 report
• Rapport fra Lucca festivalen