GRAPHIC 2011 Day 1: arvo of Saturday August 20/ More Anon

As mentioned below, the film-maker Dan Hayward grabbed some footage at GRAPHIC.

Here, I'm speaking with Jordan Verzar, the driving force behind GRAPHIC, and one of the 'curators' of the festival.  (Virginia Hyam is the other curator, and Ben Marshall the producer).

There, I'm chatting with Scott McCloud about graphic novels.

Thanks to these gentlemen for their time: it was a busy weekend for them both.

(Blimey, I hope that's my good side!)

GRAPHIC 2011 Day 1: Saturday 20 August/ Oz Comics

Yes folks, there he be, your intrepid reporter, barking into a microphone while the unlikely geometries of the Sydney Opera house threaten to eat his right ear.  Actually this shot and the rest of the photographs in this post are excerpted from footage taken by Dan Hayward, who with his dad Ian came up and filmed GRAPHIC #2. Of which more anon.

Above, the Marvellous Mandy Ord, doing a live reading of stories from her book 'Sensitive Creatures', from the first session that Susan and I saw at GRAPHIC, 'Oz Comics Show and Tell', and below, Leaping Leigh Rigozzi,

who binned a copy of the Sydney newspaper 'The Sunday Telegraph', the paper which, in publishing an article about R. Crumb as a 'self-confessed sex pervert' or similar, caused that same R. Crumb to decide not to attend.  Arrgh.  Humans.  Sometimes they drive you crazy.

Oslo Davis was also there, speaking about Drawn From Life, the comics newspaper which he edited and which was published as part of this year's Melbourne Writers Festival. And also talking about his own, very funny cartoons.

Here are the panelists, who emerged en masse at the end of the session. Prior to this, each of them had done a solo presentation to do with their work.

All of them, that is, except the 'two Sydney Matts' - above, Matt Taylor doing a live reading of his recently-launched Lars the Last Viking goes to the End of the World, with live metal guitar playing by his friend Scott Collins, and

Matt Huynh, who actually wasn't on stage during his piece - a beautiful, continuous horizontal scroll-comic of people rehearsing for a Dragon Festival - which was accompanied by live drumming, and a live dragon!

So there they are, folks - from left to right, Gabriel Clark, Pat Grant, Mandy Ord, Leigh Rigozzi, Oslo Davis, Matt Taylor and Matt Huynh.  A truly great start to GRAPHIC 2011.

What It Is? youtube episode #3 - Comics and Australian History

And here's the youtube episode of Monday night's 'What It Is?' - again, shot and chopped by film maker Daniel Hayward in double-quick time. Thanks, Dan!

And you can hear some of the song, 'The Curious Man', the Blandowski calypso recorded by The Death Adder in Berlin, which we missed on the night because of technical hitches.

'A Comic Book History of Australia' is what we called the show on the Readings website, but okay, yes, it was a bit specificker that that.  It was more about Victorian history.  Well, Melbourne history.  Okay, Melbourne history circa the 1850s.

And, when I got home and was chatting to Susan about it, she pointed out that the evening wasn't SO much about comics, either.  A bit, but not a lot.  It's probably more accurately about various forms of  'paper theatre'. Kamishibai.  Puppetry. 2-D sets. Masks.

Okay, so what about calling it 'An Evening of Paper Theatre in 1850s Melbourne'?

Call it what you will.

It is what it is.

Please do scroll down to the next post for still images and ruminations on the night.

Yours,

Bernard

'What It Is?' #3 - What a Thing It Was!

So, last night Monday 27 June 2011, at Readings bookshop in Carlton, we delivered the third show in the category-busting series that IS, 'What It Is?'

In this case, the 'we' was me and

Alex McDermott, whose latest book

got published recently. So we launched it, there and then, with the three 'Huzzahs' normally reserved for the launch of a comic book (if you'd been there, you'd know why I consider Alex's weighty yet extremely toothsome tome to be an honorary comic book) and then we got into the show, kicking off with a kamishibai about the Australian career of the 19th century natural historian Wilhelm von Blandowski (yes, THAT Wilhelm von Blandowski - the one who I took on a Victorian roadtrip last year - read all about that here)

The kamishibai WAS to have been 'narrated' by a song called 'The Curious Man', by calypso artist 'The Death Adder', of Berlin, but various technological barriers meant that the recording could not be played, so I ended up speaking the story.  The song however is magnificent, a sprawling calypso epic of high romance and utter desolation, and I will find a way of posting it.

Wilhelm at the Port of Adelaide in 1849.

He loves it here.

But 7 years later, 200 miles up the Darling River, he has an experience of the sublime.  And from that point, his career in Australia starts to unravel.  Our argument was, he SEES something out there...

Something...

oooooooo000000000000000ooooooooo

We then went onto the story of Redmond Barry, a big statue of whom stands outside of the State Library of Victoria:

Our proposition was, you can't really understand Redmond (or Melbourne) without the vital piece of information that he was actually a

centaur.  And, as a centaur, it is unsurprising that he spends quite a bit of time on his 1839 voyage over from Ireland

amidships, as it were, with one Mrs Scott, which Mr Scott, and eventually the entirety of the rest of the passengers, finds quite off-putting (thank you to the puppetteering hands of Stephen Mushin (Barry the centaur and Mrs Scott and ocean) and Colleen Burke (boat and ocean).  When they get to Sydney?  He's really frozen out of the social scene there.

Anyway he eventually makes it to Melbourne and makes it in Melbourne and, in the end, makes Melbourne (State Library, Melbourne University, Art Gallery).  Well, you know:

he's a centaur.

ooooooo000000000000000ooooooo

Our coda to the night was an imagined 1859 meeting

between Blandowski (me) and Barry (Alex), in which Barry identifies what it is that has followed Wilhelm back from the interior, and indeed what it is which will tail him all the way back to Silesia.  All the way back to his death.

And you too can see it, here.

THE NEXT 'What It Is?' (and final in this series): songster Marin Martini and I will puzzle over, sing about, and draw about, the mysterious and ancient connection between comics and songs.  Monday 25 July. 8pm. Readings Carlton. See you there!

THANK YOU: to Jackie Kerin again for the loan of her kamishibai box, and for all the photos dotting this post.  Soon I will post the youtube episode of last night's 'What it Is?', which, as with the other two, was shot and is presently being edited by the skilful Dan Hayward.

May 'What It Is?' - comics from Bordeaux to Broome

Well what a month May was! I did one show for the Clean Energy Council about renewable energy, did another show about the humble candle as the great scientist Michael Faraday at St Paul's Cathedral, spoke about Australian graphic novels to the Graphic Narratives class at Melbourne University and then about comic book editing to the Society of Editors (Victoria). I also managed to turn 43 somewhere in there.

And at the end of the month was 'What It Is? no. 2, The Town that Comics Built'.  Above is the youtube episode, shot and edited by Dan Hayward - great work Dan!  And below is a DC10 flying the very tall Mike Shuttleworth into France.

There was a kamishibai titled 'Sous les paves, la planche' - 'Under the paving stones, the comics'.

It starred

Jean-Paul Sartre and

Simone de Beauvoir, who

argued and

made up.

We travelled with Mike to Angouleme, the great comics festival held every January in the freezing cold south-west of France.

Then we came back to the hot north-west of Australia, and I spoke with Brenton McKenna, the author of 'Ubbys Underdogs: The Legend of the Phoenix Dragon'

a way-cool graphic novels for kids, first of a trilogy, from Magabala Books. It was great to meet Brenton, who we also interviewed on The Comic Spot, where you can listen to that interview. Brenton even drew a picture of Ubby for us!

It was another great fun 'What It Is?' - the which question remains pertinent, as I am still not quite sure what indeed 'What It Is?' is, but I'm going to press on with another couple, at least.

Next 'What It Is?' will be a historical fairy tale for adults with the remarkable Alex McDermott, poet/historian, centaur laureate, and bike rider extraordinaire.  Monday June 27 at 8pm at Readings Carlton: details (and a drawing) on the Readings website. We will also launch Alex's latest book, 'Australian History for Dummies'.  Come along!

And massive thanks to storyteller Jackie Kerin for all the photos in this post, for the lend (again!) of her beautiful kamishibai box, and for writing about the May 'What It Is?' so beautifully here.

What It Is? show #1: Eisenstein and Comics

Above, Michael Camilleri and I starting our 'What It Is?' show at Readings bookshop in Carlton on Monday 28 March 2011. It was a show about Sergei Eisenstein, the great Soviet film director, and his approach to montage (a way of editing film, a way of presenting film stories), and the ways that this might apply to comics.

Here's me presenting 'Sergei's Pram', a kamishibai which imagined Eisenstein and fellow filmmaker Lev Kuleshov discussing the filming of the famous Odessa steps sequence from 'Battleship Potemkin'.

For this, I was lucky enough to borrow this amazing kamishibai box from Jackie Kerin (for the tale of its construction by Ted, go to Jackie's blog entry here).

Michael and I also wanted to look at mise-en-scene (another, complementary, sometimes oppositional - thanks, Andre Bazin - way of considering film editing), so we enlisted friends Fleur, Mark and Bruce (in the hat) to help us present a scene from 'Citizen Kane' by Orson Welles. With hilarious results.

Finally, Michael presented his epic homage to Soviet-style montage, 'The Two Podlokovs' which may be viewed in all its glory on his website, here.

A remarkable night - thanks to Christine Gordon of Readings for asking for a series of nights looking at the art of comic books. Oh yes folks, there's going to be more What It Is...

Also thanks to Dan Hayward of The Video Factory for the photos in this post, and for shooting and editing together a great video of the night, to be found on youtube here. And thanks to Oliver Montagnat for additional camerawork.

NEXT 'What It Is' show: Monday 30 May, 8pm at Readings Carlton - Mike Shuttleworth and I will build Angouleme, city of comics, out of paper, live on stage (with music too!), and then we'll speak to Brenton McKenna, of Broome, about his new graphic novel for kids, Ubby's Underdogs.

What a night it promises to be...