The second edition of Cairo Comix Festival is now running at the American University in Cairo’s Tahrir Campus. The festival, which celebrates Arabic language contemporary comics, took off on 29 September, and closes on 2 October.
Cairo Comix is the first international festival of comics in Egypt, and is a coproduction of the Cairo Comix and the French Institute. This year’s episode comes under the title “3as Sotooh”, literally On the Rooftop, and brings together more than 20 cartoonists and writers from Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Palestine, Syria, and Tunisia. Their works in various publications, magazines, graphic novels, fanzines, and albums, are presented at Souk Comics, the comics market at the festival, and available for sale at the shop CairoComix throughout the festival. Book signings are held at the CairoComix Boutique.
The festival is hosting Thomas Azuelos, the French comics author who published in 2016 the graphic novel The Committee (ed. Cambourakis), freely adapted from the novel by Sonallah Ibrahim. Mr Azuelos presented his book on Saturday 1 October at AUC’s Oriental Hall, and spoke about the creative process of adaptation and the dialogue he had established with the work of the great Egyptian writer. His presentation was followed by a book signing.
On the morning of Sunday 2 October, at the Ewart Memorial Hall, the seminar this year’s seminar “Generation (s) of comics” will be dedicated to reflect on the influences and references common in contemporary comics productions. Entitled “Repositories legacy: Arab comics in the diversity of its roots,” it will give voice to researchers from different disciplines working on comics or Arabic illustration, as well as historians and critics of the International Comics both practitioners and professionals, to contemplate contemporary Arab comics in the light of forms of transmission of visual and stripologiques cultures.
Sunday will also see guests from the International City of comics and picture (Angoulême), the Arab World Institute
(Paris) and the French Institute (Paris), join in discussing a project for an exhibition in France on “The new Arab comics” in 2018.
Watani International
1 October 2016