Did you say “Krazy”?

And one more! Yes, one more book on animation and comics, including animes and mangas to add to your piling up reading list. These last two or three years, we have witnessed a flurry of works from a variety of disciplines on visual popular culture, especially on mangas and animes. This was somewhat long overdue considering the sheer size of the Japanese industry in this field and its tentacular extension in Asia and the rest of the world since the 1960’s. Indeed, until 2005-2006, you’d have been really hard put finding any serious works on these phenomena other than catalogues of the “best” series published or broadcasted. Now, it’s becoming difficult to keep up with the publishing pace if you aren’t a millionaire. But, the more choice, the better!

So, what have we got here to be cheering about? Something seemingly “Krazy”! Bringing together artists and media critics, this catalogue from a Vancouver recent exhibit aims at presenting the interconnections existing between the worlds of animation, comics (including mangas), video games and arts from a double perspective: that from the artists themselves and that from scholars specialized in these fields.

I haven’t read this book yet, but it seems to be quite a promising work from a theoretical point of views, as it might help us understand better some of the recent evolutions in the popular culture industries. Moreover, if the witty tone of the book title and its front cover reflects the literary style of the authors, then, it should also make a really pleasant reading for anyone interested in these topics.

The best way to make sure is to get it. You can order it directly from the University of California Press website or, for a significantly reduced price, from Amazon.com.

Festival International du Film d’Animation d’Annecy 2008

Samedi se terminait le 32ème Festival International du Film d’Animation d’Annecy sur la victoire de “Sita sings the Blues”, un long-métrage de l’Américaine Nina Paley. Evidemment, cette année encore, je n’ai pas pu me rendre à ce festival, coincée comme je le suis par les études (et incidemment, le rhume des foins). J’espère vraiment pouvoir y assister un jour avant ma retraite!

Voici quelques articles du Monde online à propos des œuvres primées au cours de cet événement. Il est est, comme d’habitude, à regretter l’angle franco-français adopté par les journalistes. Alors que le Festival mettait l’Inde à l’honneur, les journalistes n’ont parlé que des quelques œuvres ayant reçu des prix, sans vraiment aller dans les détails, s’attachant plutôt à la production française, certes méritante et intéressante, mais finalement, tout de même minoritaire.

“Sita Sings the Blues”, de Nina Paley, distingué au Festival d’animation d’Annecy

16.06.2008

Sita Sings the Blues, de l’Américaine Nina Paley, a reçu, samedi 14 juin, le Cristal du long métrage du 32e Festival international du film d’animation d’Annecy, le Cannes de l’animation. Pour cette édition, le Festival d’Annecy avait choisi de célébrer l’Inde. Lire la suite>

Un “Chat botté” français met au défi les studios hollywoodiens

13.06.2008

Un passage au Festival international du film d’animation, qui se tient pour la 32e fois à Annecy (Haute-Savoie), jusqu’au 14 juin, relève autant de la leçon d’anatomie que de la visite d’exposition. Lire la suite >

Arte et Canal+ ont rendez-vous avec le dessin animé

10.06.2008

Comme chaque année, Arte, Canal+, et France Télévisions sont partenaires du Festival international du film d’animation d’Annecy. Lire la suite >

Et voici quelques articles en provenance de médias anglo-saxons. Malheureusement, il semblerait que le Festival d’Annecy manque d’écho au-delà de la francophonie. Ou il se peut que je n’ai pas fait la recherche sous les bons mots-clé. En tous cas, c’est à peu près tout ce que j’ai trouvé pour l’instant qui concerne vraiment le Festival d’Annecy.

India the next big animation hub

Economic Times, India - Jun 13, 2008

This year marks the centenary of the first animated film in the world. Fantasmagorie, a two-minute hand-drawn film by Emile Cohl, was screened in a Paris theatre in August 1908. Now 100 years later, at the world’s largest animation film festival at Annecy in France, it is the turn of India to take the centre-stage. Read more >

‘Brendan and the Secret of Kells’ Animation Film at Annecy ‘08

June 11th, 2008 6:19 PM by Aaron H. Bynum

As the world’s most prominent animation marketplace gets underway this week in France, a vast array of producers, distributors and potential buyers are lining up to discern what the next few years hold for the moving pictures industries. The 2008 Annecy International Animated Film Festival has always found a way to exhibit both the highly noted as well as the “works in progress” that could prove groundbreaking to a variety of viewing territories. Sporting any number of business meetings or short and feature film screenings, Annecy is certainly a “kaleidoscope of international animation,” as its organizers assert. Read more >

Interview Retranscription

I’m now in the process of retranscribing the interview I was able to record at JapAniManga Night. As anyone who has done interviews in the past knows, it is of course a difficult and tedious task. But it is also extremely interesting for several reasons, which I haven’t always seen outlined in the method books I have read so far. One of them is the realization of how fast we actually speak, even when we are speaking normally. The other has to do with the preparation of future interviews, especially when one has little experience in such method.

Retranscribing an interview means that one is trying to put into a written form every single word, tone of voice, and conversational phenomena that can occur in any face-to-face interactions.

First fieldwork, first mission

The general fun of fieldwork:

Alright, here is the first part of the account from my week-end at JapAniManga Night. I’m sorry, I can’t put it all in one post, so I hope you’ll be able to keep up with me as I organize my thoughts and notes. The first part is more a general assessment of that first fieldwork in terms of what I was trying to accomplish. The next posts will get into more details of my experience. Please, don’t hesitate to comment on this and the coming articles if you have the feeling that I’m making mistakes or have misunderstood certain things. After all, German isn’t my mother tongue and this Week-end was almost totally in German!

Update on dissertation progress #2

It has arrived!!

My 3 copies of “Il drago e la saeta” have arrived this morning! Marco Pellitteri has very kindly sent me these so that I can present them to people who should be able to help me get this new important contribution to research on globalized Japanese popular culture translated in French and maybe German. I’m definitely excited as I know that the content will be of top quality! I will now have to work hard to do my part in its dissemination!

JapAniManga Night: May 30 - June 1, 2008

This is going to be my second fieldwork this week. The first one started in the most improbable way. I was supposed to interview the owner of a shop specialized in mangas in Geneva and I ended up being dragged in an extremely interesting conversation with one of its regular customers. I have to say that this shop is often turned into a sort of youth community center by a core of loyal customers who will come and spend whole Wednesday afternoons (no school that afternoon in Switzerland) or Saturdays, talking about mangas, animes but also any other topics and playing Go. The owner of this business as well as the employees being all fans of Japanese popular culture and belonging to pretty much the same age classes as the customers, the atmosphere of the place then becomes very warm, friendly and well, fun. I myself appreciate spending time there, especially in the Summer, as it is much fresher than outside and I can also relax there from the stress of daily life. However, yesterday, I was there on a mission, that of testing the questions I’m planing on asking people at JapAniManga Night, this coming weekend. Except that it didn’t go at all as expected. I ended up speaking with this quite outgoing high schooler and since we had started this conversation as a casual dialogue, I didn’t dare take out my notepad and pen to start writing down all the stuff he was saying and which were actually answering my questions before I even asked them. Of course, I didn’t dare either to take out my digital sound recorder, as I hadn’t specifically asked him for an interview. I didn’t want to put him off and although we had already met in the recent past, he didn’t remember that I was a Ph.D. student doing research on the reception of animes and mangas. I told him in the course of the discussion, but I thought it was too late to switch to the “interview mode” and felt, at that point, it would be a disrupting factor to actually abandon the “normal conversation” mode on an equal footing between two regular customers and amateurs of Japanese popular culture. However, I have decided to write down as much as possible from what I remembered he had said during this conversation. Fortunately, before we parted, 2 hours later, he accepted my visit card and the idea that I might contact him again to ask, this time more formally, for an interview with him. In that occasion, I hope to be able to clarify my notes and go more in-depth on some of the topics he addressed spontaneously.

What I took from this conversation is that my questions, although I couldn’t test them directly, do make sense for people who are amateurs, if not outright fans, of Japanese popular culture as embodied by manga fictions, and that they aren’t resented as intrusive, intimidating or potentially embarrassing. I was actually almost paralyzed by the fear to put off people I have been socializing with for a while now, online and offline, but now I have a good feeling that I can go ahead and it should work. This means that I’m much more self-confident about my field work at JapAniManga Night than I was a few days ago. Well, I was also feeling unsure, because I didn’t get to prepare myself as much as I had wanted. That damn heyfever kept me away from books, computers and notes for several days. I’m definitely looking forwards to this event and hope my allergies will let me in peace for a change!