Covid-19 and BD 2020: rififi at festivals

Clearly, this health crisis is a long sob. Most face-to-face events have been postponed this year, subject to successive waves of contamination, adapting to circumstances.

Book fairs and comic book festivals are obviously affected and their future is, to say the least, also vague. This impacts authors, publishers, in particular alternative and independent publishing, local bookstores who often hold the publishers’ stand, institutions and artists who often take advantage of the event to make themselves known, not to mention a whole ecosystem of permanent, intermittent and freelance who rely on this event to ensure their turnover.

This year, it started with the cancellation of Livre-Paris in March, then Aix, Bastia, Formula Bula in Paris, Japan Expo in Villepinte… Recently Colomiers, Saint-Malo, Blois, SoBD and the Angoulême Festival went by the wayside. In a formidable domino effect, all present and future comic book festivals are canceled.

A few weeks ago, the Angoulême FIBD decided to place its festival in June, immediately followed by Livre-Paris on the same dates! The question was already being asked how the editors were going to be present at the two events?

Added to this battle of titans is the fact that two other festivals, and not the least, Les Rendez-vous de la BD d’Amiens and Lyon BD, also take place in June! Their organizers come to proclaim their disapproval. They feel directly threatened, in particular Lyon BD which, ironically, already saw itself competing with Angoulême!

For the Ministry of Culture and the National Book Center, which directly or indirectly finance these four events, this is squaring the circle. The province sees it as further proof of Parisian arrogance, the small festivals as a regular aggression on the part of the most powerful actors.

However, they do not have a choice either: it is a question of their survival and dozens of jobs! Except that in trying to save themselves from drowning, they are sinking the others …

It is up to the State to quickly send buoys large enough to prevent the 9th Art from sinking in its entirety. “Whatever the cost …” we said in the spring /

THE PRESS RELEASE OF THE COMICS OF AMIENS AND LYON BD

The long-term presence of the pandemic crisis threatens several comic book festivals today.

If the Ministry of Culture has chosen to make 2020 the year of comics, it is to underline the incredible creative abundance shown by the ninth art, its authors, and more generally all of its actors for several decades now.

They defend the comic strip, the diversity of its forms, its representations, as well as the liveliness and abundance of its creation. Together they promote the rich and varied expressions of what is much more than a popular culture: The comic strip is at the same time a literature, a medium, an artistic discipline, a performing and visual art.

Among these actors, several festivals are today particularly threatened by the inclusion of this crisis over time and by its consequences on the annual calendar of events around the ninth art.

During the first confinement, the impacted festivals deployed in difficult conditions and with incredible responsiveness treasures of creativity, innovation and resilience. They invented digital events and projects, staggered their programming over time, published unpublished stories in digital and paper, they simply reinvented themselves.

They thus ensured the essential link between artists and their audiences. More broadly, our festivals have made it possible to maintain the place and influence of the ninth art and its creators within a cultural landscape profoundly disrupted by the pandemic.

Our festivals were able, despite the cancellations and with the support of the public authorities, to maintain the remuneration of artists linked to the canceled events. They have also been able to develop them as part of the initiatives and newly launched projects and thus support the artists in this difficult period.

The long-term inclusion of this pandemic crisis now has an impact on important meetings in the comic strip sector scheduled for the first quarter of 2021. Among them Livre Paris and the Angoulême festival have chosen to postpone it to spring of their events.

This reprogramming upsets the annual calendar of events around comics. The immediate consequence of this will be to weaken the comic book festivals usually held during this period and with them the support they have long given to artists of the ninth art *.

The accumulation of several meetings in a “pocket” of dates going from the end of May to the end of June will finally drastically limit the media exposure from which the comic strip and its artists benefited from meetings spread throughout. of the year.

While they participated in most of the major events of the year, professionals in the sector indicate that they will now have to make choices.

Finally, it is cultural diversity that is threatened. Our festivals have demonstrated for many years the relevance of a diversity of representations of comics that they embody through different artistic directions, angles and formats.

By defending the place of this art within the cultural institutions of our cities and territories, by making it shine internationally, by developing large-scale actions with school audiences and the place of artists in the city, our festivals have installed a modern image, alive, and resolutely turned towards the future of the comic strip and its creation.

Faced with these threats, we call on the public authorities to do everything possible so that our festivals and structures can continue their work for the benefit of artists and actors in the sector, in contact with and for the benefit of the territories in which they express themselves, and serving the diversity of representations of the comic arts.

Mathieu Diez, Director of Lyon BD

Pascal Mériaux Director of the Amiens Comic Strip Meetings

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