Well, looking over my previous posts from ALgiers I now see the danger of
1) blogging late at night after drinking with cartoonists
2) said blogging from an iPhone
So, sorry for the late night spelling impaired blathering.
Now that I'm home with a real keyboard, I find myself without words. It was incredible, absolutely incredible, to meet cartoonists from all over the world, largely from the African continent.
To set the scene a bit, here's a few of pictures of Algiers:
Lower Casbah...
Casbah marketplace
I went to Algiers to attend the 2eme Festival International de la Bande Dessinee... and international cartoon festival that drew from all over the African continent, the Middle East, Europe, Canada, New Zealand... but mostly from countries in Africa.
(for more on this festival, go to www.bdalger.net)
As part of the exhibition, I served on a panel of women cartoonists, each of us talking through translators about our careers. Some of the women speak 3 or 4 languages... so they helped out the linguistically deficient American.
From left, Gihen Ben Mahmoud from Tunisia (writes romance/adventure comics and speaks French, Italian, Arabic and English); Marwa Kamel from Egypt (TV Animation / programs and magazines for kids); Jussi Lamathd, comics, and the first and only woman cartoonist of Congo Brazzaville; me, Titane Laurent from New Zealand (comic strips); Gea Ferraris from Italy (comics) and Lena I. Merhej, animator, illustrator and designer, and winner in the juried competition.
It was a real honor to meet these and other women cartoonists at the exhibition. It was an honor to meet all the other cartoonists as well... all with their own version of cartooning, most of it politcally driven. Comic strips for amusement and social comment, like Stone Soup, are not very common there.
Cartooning is serious business in places where civil war reigns, leaders are despots, rights are trampled, censorship is everyday and jail is not at all out of the question. Many of these cartoonists do not live in their home countries because there are warrants out for their arrest... or because they simply can't function there. This was true for several of the cartoonists I met. Gihen from Tunisia lives in Rome. Tayo lives in Britain. Many take flight to Paris, or Italy, or Spain.
Communication was not always so easy, since French was the local language (along with Arabic). We English speakers were in a big minority.
But... there's always drawing on a cocktail napkin (universal cartoonist's language). When I asked Masin from Yemin what people dress like in his hometown, here's what he drew:
The women's outfits vary and I think the percentages were to note how common each is... but a couple of beers and 24 hours of plane travel later I don't remember. Note that despite the seemingly retro outfits, Mazin has a hotmail address.
We cartoonists were treated to a little touring... here are some pictures from a trip to Tipasa, a Roman ruin on the Mediterranean Sea. I'll just float some images here so you can see a variety of people and scenery. Everyone you see is a cartoonist.
Eventually, there's a trip to a fishing wharf and lunch...
Where cartoonists of course draw on the paper table cloth...
Gihen of Tunisia and Simon Dupuis, a French Canadian illustrator.
Ersin Karabulut of Istanbul...
Days end, a late night party that ends up with a cartoonist (from Congo) grabbing the mike. Of course.
No meeting of cartoonists is complete without a great bar to meet in (and bar napkins to draw on). For those of us staying at the hotel El D'jazair (frequented by Edith Piaf, Hemmingway, Camus, de Beauvoir and more once upon a time) this great bar was waiting.
Finally, on Algiers... a photo of our guide parking. He was convinced that we should not change money at the hotel, that we could get a better rate "in the street".
You think that's a "Currency Exchange" window of some kind? Guess again. Observe guy out window with wad of cash.
We passed.
Tomorrow or so... the trip to Morocco.
welcome back! glad you had a great time!
david loveland
Posted by: david | October 27, 2009 at 09:06 AM
What a great experience, and a real honor. Good for you, Jan!
Posted by: www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=544566372 | October 28, 2009 at 10:24 AM
Jan,
What a fantastic opportunity to have gone on this trip. You're so lucky. Thanks for sharing.
Posted by: Karyl Miller | October 28, 2009 at 06:18 PM
Just seeing this now. That last photo is hysterical.
Posted by: twitter.com/AllanCavanagh | April 09, 2010 at 07:07 AM