KomMissia 2009

VIII Moscow International Natasha Monastyreva Festival of Graphic Novel (graphic novels, manga, BD, animation etc)

What is graphic novel festival?

It is very simple: our stories cannot be told in a single picture. Hence, we begin to “make a movie on the paper” – in other words, to create a comics. The genre of drawn stories – the so called “9th Art” – is an alloy of literature, painting and cinema. In different countries this kind of art looks differently and have different names, but we all need a real artistic event to elaborate the right way of genre evolution. And we are doing the Festival!

Hihus

KomMissia principal objectives are:

• To develop the genre of graphic novels in all its directions
• To dethrone the boring myth that all comics are inevitably funny and stupid
• To give to authors from different countries an opportunity to show their artistic works

Festival press-releases.

Actually, that’s all.

Festival consists of two principal parts:

1.Contest program

Open the November 1, 2008 for all authors – Russian and foreign ones. The competition is open for graphic novels presented in the form of full story or partially. Published albums are  considered separately.

Competitive works become publically accessible on the Festival official web-site www.kommissia.ru, where the “Public Choice prize” winner is to be revealed by means of open vote. Visiting this site you can also see the precedent years best works.

Our essential prizes – “The Grand-Prix”, “The Grand Scenario” and “The Art-Prix” – are also to be distributed according to festival participants choice made by voting on the site.

All authors, amateurs as well as professionals, can participate in the contest. For this moment, more than 300 authors are participating in the competition.

2. Exhibition and educational program

Best contest works take their place in the Festival official catalogue and participate in exhibitions. 

Moreover, many exhibitions of foreign authors take place within the Festival events. Countries like France, Japan, Italy, Spain, Belgium, Switzerland, Poland, Slovenia, USA, Ukraine, Finland, Bulgaria and Luxemburg took part in the precedent Festival editions.

In 2009, exhibitions will be open from April, 23 to May, 10 in VINZAVOD Center of Modern Art, М’ARS Center of Modern Art (2500 м2 of exhibition space in the center of Moscow) and some other popular city sites.

One of the most important parts of our Festival are regular performances and master-classes of leading national and foreign comic authors.

Festival visitors

Generally, it’s of course the young people who visits Festival events, but the adult public – journalists, editors, art reviewers, collectors, modern art amateurs – also are among our regular visitors.

Average rate of visiting of the Festival Exhibition program – about 20 000 persons on the main exhibition places, but it is to be taken into account that after the Festival, exhibitions participate in other cultural events – and not only in Russia, but also abroad. Thus, the number of onlookers doubles or triples.

Moreover, about 300 000 persons are visiting the Festival web-site during the active period.

Collaboration with Cultural Centers of different countries

From the beginning, Festival successfully collaborates with Cultural Centers of different countries; we are constantly open to any kinds of proposals and still actively searching new contacts. Roughly speaking, our position can be formulated like this: “Help us to bring here an exhibition, a good authors or editors, and we ensure the excellent exhibition space, the attentive public, and the good press”.

Sponsoring

Our Festival is a fully non-commercial event. Because its organizers physically cannot cover all Festival financial needs, the committee is in a permanent search of sponsors. Among our partners was Raiffeisen Bank, Motorolla, different editors, producing agencies and content-providers. The Organizer Committee is open to all kind of sponsor’s propositions.

Press

Every year our Festival attracts a great interest of mass-media. The Festival events are covered by leading Russian TV channels and most  popular radio stations - from “Echo of Moscow”  to “Silver Rain”; as for the periodic press, we can name the widest spectrum of editions – from “Expert” to “Commersant”, and from «Cool Girls» to “Elle”.

Program 2009.

In 2009 “KomMissia” became a “Festival of Festivals” – best Comics festivals from different countries will present in Moscow their exhibitions. Their organizers and best artists will give master classes to share their professional know-how. We hope to recreate in our Festival a common meta-space where exists and acts actual world Comic Art.

programm

Festival Organizer Committee:

Hihus (Хихус) – Director, ideologist. Art Association “LMR” («ЛМР»).
740-95-34
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Nastia Galashina (Настя Галашина) – Festival curator.
8-926-584-75-28
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Assia Dokuchaeva (Ася Докучаева) – Festival coordinator.
8-916-553-47-41
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Nadia Imra – Sponsor department
+7-926-224-86-09
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