Angouleme 2020 (1 of 5) -- inside the tents and around the festival, plus the Racine Report (UPDATED 2.17.20)

This is the largest comics festival in Europe. It still takes place in a small city, but after many years of attending, it's obvious the show has grown in popularity.

The lines are longer. The crowds are more international than ever. And this year... I saw my first co-players in attendance.

We enjoyed good weather (for winter) -- not bitter cold, not much rain, some sun most days. It made all the walking around required much easier.

Here are some highlights:

 Entrance to the main tent...

The long line (with bag check) for attendees below right

 Inside the main tent with major publisher booths and artist signings...

 Sample book...

This publsiher's area had a special exhibit of the artist's tools and studio spaces...

(photos will be added here)

Large publishers had the most detailed, and popular, signing events..

Exhibitor/side entrance for the main tent.

 Exterior of the Foreign Rights tent

Inside the "Para BD" tent of out of print book dealers and indie publishers...

Inside the city-block long "New York" tent of indie publishers and artists...

 The "New York" tent had its own cafe...

    

 Red banners along the streets of Angouleme help direct attendees to the various tents and exhibitions...

Also happening during this year's festival -- reaction from artists to The Racine Report. Evidently, this is a government report about plight of creatives in France and lack of appropriate compensation. At least, that's the gist of what I could get from a very few discussions of links that were being shared on social media.

Link below is a detailed and thoughtful analysis of the report from an American perspective. Written by Augie De Blieck, Jr. 2.16.2020 on Pipeline Comics.

https://www.pipelinecomics.com/the-racine-report/

There was a "strike" by the artists one day during the festival, but it was an orderly, formalized protest held on a stage.

Bottom line -- even though France is famous for its love of comics as "the 9th art," the undervaluing of artists contributions to the success of comics and art in general is an international problem. 

I'll use this space to share any links or info I find:

WITHOUT CREATORS, NO FRENCH CREATION   SUPPORT FOR THE BRUNO RACINE REPORT

Tribune published in Le Monde on February 13, 2020

"Everyone who works has the right to just and favorable remuneration ensuring for himself and his family an existence worthy of human dignity"
Article 23 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Since the release of the Bruno Racine report, carrying out an unprecedented project to save the creative professions in France, representatives of the National Syndicate of Publishing have fiercely opposed its implementation.

We, artist-authors, are signing this joint text today, to demonstrate the solidarity of our creative professions.

The Bruno Racine report is a lucid, pragmatic and incontestable observation which proposes very concrete measures which can improve in depth the conditions of creation of all artist-writers: writers and writers, photographers, composers and composers, scriptwriters, translators and painters, painters , designers, plastic artists, sculptors and sculptors, videographers, etc.

A report as precise on the legal, fiscal, social and administrative levels highlights our violated rights, the weakness of our remuneration, the lack of state regulation, the lack of clear status. He also unveils a huge scandal: the AGESSA (Authors' Social Security Management Association) had been in violation of the social security code since 1975. Despite having worked, how many of the 190,000 artist-authors are found today now deprived of pension rights because of the dysfunctions of the management of this organization and the inaction of the State for decades?

Isolated by the very nature of their activity, all artist-authors in France are in a clearly asymmetrical balance of power during negotiations with the distributors of their works. However, the creative industries are highly regulated sectors. Just take the example of the great measure of the single price of the book. No measure of this scope exists for artist-authors, who remain - as the Racine report says - in the blind spot of cultural policies. Yet it is in the name of creators and cultural exception that the State legislates on many subjects that concern the industry. It is also without us that major decisions on copyright are made.

If the recommended measures are applied, artist-authors will finally cease to be the eternal adjustment variable for the creative industries. Creators will find their rightful place.

We appeal to the intervention of the State, to give the creators of this country more just and dignified conditions.

Artist-authors from all sectors of French creation, we support this innovative report and its essential measures. For fairer remuneration, for the recognition of creative work, for professional status, for the improvement of our social rights, for the new framework of social dialogue under the aegis of the State, so that artists- authors are no longer the great forgotten of the French cultural exception.

Because without creators, no French creation.

3548 CREATORS SIGNED THIS FORUM: