COMICS ART IN ARMENIA OPENING NEW HORIZONS
by Harout Ekmanian
May 17, 2012
YEREVAN (A.W.)-Comic strips are known as the ninth art worldwide,
comprised of both literature and drawings. It is a genre that allows
you to see, feel, and live through the stories at the same time. It
is often viewed as being equivalent to graphic novels, and there are
many feature films and animations that are based on comic books.
The Third International Comics Festival took place this year from
April 20-22 in the Tumo Center for Creative Technologies, within the
framework of events dedicated to the 500th anniversary of Armenian
printing, and the proclamation of Yerevan as the World Book Capital
of 2012. (Photo courtesy of Tumo Center for Creative Technologies)
Very recently, a festival dedicated to comic strips was organized in
Yerevan by the Association of Comics Art Promotion in Armenia (or
APBDA, the French abbreviation for l’Association pour la Promotion
de la Bande Dessinee en Armenie). The Third International Comics
Festival took place this year from April 20-22 in the Tumo Center
for Creative Technologies, within the framework of events dedicated
to the 500th anniversary of Armenian printing, and the proclamation
of Yerevan as the World Book Capital of 2012.
The festival was supported by the Armenian Ministry of Culture and
the French Embassy in Armenia. In his opening remarks, the ambassador
of France to Armenia, Henry Renaud, said the event was the result of
cooperation between the Armenian and French sides. “I am pleased that
the Ministry of Culture has comprehended its importance and supported
this event,” said Renaud. The Armenian deputy minister of culture,
Arev Samuelian, was also present at the opening.
The festival included exhibitions, conferences, animated movie
screenings, comic book presentations and signings, contests, and
comics master courses.
One of the exhibitions, titled “My Armenia,” showcased the work of
20 Armenian illustrators who had attended skills courses with French
comics professionals in 2010-11. Their work was also published in a
book with the same title, and the first presentation and signing of
the book took place during the first day of the festival, after the
opening ceremony.
Another exhibition took place in the “Art Bridge” bookstore/cafe. It
included the works of Dikran Mangassarian from Armenia, as well as
the original works of world-famous artists, such as Marjane Satrapi,
Arthur De Paine, Juano Cardino, and others.
This year’s festival was clearly focused on the Armenian Genocide. The
exhibition titled “Never Forget” was dedicated to all genocides.
Jean Mardikian, the co-founder of the Festival International de la
Bande Dessinee in Angouleme, France, and the co-founder of APBDA in
2008, told the Armenian Weekly that this exhibition was the initiative
of the National Heritage Center of the city of Valance in France,
which also hosts a genocide museum.
“The Institute Francaise usually helps us financially to do our
projects, and they also helped us to bring their comics collections on
the Armenian Genocide to Armenia,” Mardikian told the Weekly. “They
also help us with the necessary connections and professionals to do
master class courses in Armenia.”
The opening ceremony featured guests from France and Italy. Paolo
Cossi from Italy presented his comic books Medz Yeghern and Ararat.
“I made my first book Medz Yeghern to explain and introduce the
Armenian Genocide to the Italian people,” said Cossi. “My motivation
was a very human motivation in the first place, and it was very
important because it is the first genocide of the 20th century. I
wanted to create something that can educate the Italian public about
genocide, because they know very little about it.”
Medz Yeghern, Cossi’s first book, sold 3,000 copies in the first
release. It was translated to French, Dutch, Spanish, and Korean. One
of the most important publishing houses in France, “Dargaud,” soon
after agreed to make a second release of the book with 10,000 copies.
“I started my first comic book about the Armenian Genocide, which
pushed me to be more interested in the Armenian culture. So I decided
to make the second book about Mount Ararat,” said Cossi.
Ararat is in Italian and will soon be available in French. The book
tells of the daily life and culture of Armenians living around Mount
Ararat during the period before the genocide. The story is half-fiction
and half-historic.
After Medz Yeghern and Ararat, Rossi’s next book will be about the
life of Armenians today.
“It is my second time in Armenia. I like the history and culture
of the country, the church rituals, the local traditions, and its
story of independence. My books are not translated to English, but I
strongly desire that, because I want these storied to be read in the
United States and the English-speaking countries,” said Rossi in an
interview with the Weekly.
Dikran Mangassarian, an Armenian cartoons illustrator based in Yerevan,
also took part in the festival. Mangassarian has already written six
comic books, two of which are published. One of them was ordered
by the Mekhitarian Monastery in Venice, and is about the life of
Mekhitar Sepsdatsi, the founder of the Mekhitarist order. The other
is the second part of Silence; order from Costantinopolis, a comic
book about the genocide.
“My friend’s father was a very famous genocide scholar and I used
to learn a lot about this issue from him during my student years,”
said Mangassarian. “One day a friend told me their genocide survival
story and that was when I decided to present that story with graphic
images by making a comic book.”
Mangassarian chose comic strips as a way to present that story. It’s
become his medium in art, as well as his main source of income since
the 1990’s.
According to Mangassarian, comics are able to cure many of the ills
in the Armenian society.
In 1992, he established the first comics newspaper in Armenia. He was
one of the very few in the country to make comic strip novels for
the next 15 years. In 2007, he went to Angouleme and presented his
comic book about the genocide to Jean Mardikian and Varoujan Sirapian,
who were already involved in the art of comics in France. Together,
they had the idea of creating seminars to develop this form of art
in Armenia, which eventually became the comics festival.
“Our work needs a perfect follow-up,” said Mangassarian. “I used
to sit with the script writer for long meetings to make the proper
illustrations for each episode. Comic strips are so much different
from normal novels, because they cannot have a lot of padding. There
mustn’t be any irrelevant parts to make the story longer. It must be
carefully molded and compact.”
“At that time, when I started doing comics in Armenia, young people
weren’t familiar with this art as much as they are today,” he said. “I
am very optimist about the future because Armenians love cinema
and they have perfect painters, too. The combination of these two
creates comic books admirers. I think that in one or two-year time,
we will have several professional comics illustrators… After that
we can even have comics journals, where we can view political satire,
detective stories, and various serials, just like any ordinary comics
journal in France.”
Sirapian said they had the idea of creating APBDA in 2007, when they
published the first cartoon book of Tintin in Armenian and brought it
to Armenia. “We asked around to know how to start a small festival of
comic strips, and we contacted Jean Mardikian… We also contacted the
Embassy of France in Armenia and the Ministry of Culture of Armenia,”
said Sirapian, who has served as the president of the Arshak Tchobanian
Research Center and a lobbying organization in France for many years.
In the beginning the project was powered through the center, and was
later registered as an independent association, the Association of
Comics Art Promotion in Armenia.
During its six-year life, APBDA organized three comics festivals in
Yerevan-the first in 2008, the second in 2009, and the third just
recently, in April 2012. APBDA also organized comics illuminations
and fireworks in 2011, open-air events, master classes, and several
exhibitions.
“Back in the Tchobanian institute, one of our objectives was
introducing the Armenian culture and literature in Europe, and also
familiarizing Armenia with French and European culture and literature,”
said Sirapian. “In Europe, many of those who know Armenians only know
about the genocide, and that is why this association is also working
on introducing the various aspects of the culture and traditions of
Armenia to them.”
Merveilles d’Armenie (Wonders of Armenia), published in 2009, was
one of those works. The association has also published 24 works of
Hovhannes Toumanian in French, under the title “Mon ami Toumanian”
(My friend Toumanian).
The association has a geopolitical motivation, said Sirapian. Any
country that wants to improve and develop must rely on its youth
power, he said. And making it possible for Armenian youth to stay in
Armenia is a very important step. According to Sirapian, to this end,
they either had to give financial help or create work opportunities
inside the country.
“After working in book productions, we found that comic books are the
best sold productions in this business. Publication giants in France
sell more comic books, with increasing demand, than other books. We
started from this point, and we planned to start with a group of young
people from Armenia, and to teach them how to make comic strips. This
process might take a few years to reach the European quality level in
this domain; in the meantime, we can give some assignments to those
artists to produce in Armenia and send them abroad to get published
in Europe. This was a way to have those talents stay in Armenia, but
also benefit from the opportunities presented from abroad. This is
the win-win project that we are working on,” Sirapian told the Weekly.
The association, however, can only support a limited numbers of
interested young people in such projects. The chain of comic books
production starts with the illustrator, then the writer, the publisher,
the distributor, and the seller, which helps the work reach wider
audiences and have a bigger effect.
During the festival, the APBDA founders held several meeting with
Armenian officials, and expressed their concerns about the lack of
proper bookstores in Yerevan. “You can publish books as much as you
want, but where are you going to sell them?” said Sirapian. “Besides,
we cannot sell our books in Armenia with the same price that we sell
them in Europe. Plus, there is the problem of illegal copying and
distribution. If we make the prices a little higher than the country
standards, it might be scanned and copied without permission and it
is very unlikely that we can defend our rights. There are a lot of
problems for publishing in today’s Armenia, but we are working to
develop this field with whatever conditions are available to us,”
he said.
http://www.armenianweekly.com/2012/05/17/comics-art-in-armenia-opening-new-horizons/