The third edition of GRRR! - International Comics Festival - will be held at various locations in the town of Pancevo, Serbia, from the 2nd to the 7th of October, 2004. The Pancevo Gallery of Contemporary Arts and Apollo, a former cinema, will be the locations where comics exhibitions, workshops, panel discussions, projections as well as concerts and other interesting events will happen.
Additional features of the Festival will be held at such unusual locations as a shoe shop, a pastry shop and a newspaper office.
The third day of the festival will be marked by a GRRR! Excursion that will convey the entire event and guest artists to the ethnic Slovak village of Kovachitza where local creative artistry will be presented through comics, painting, photography and concerts by alternative music bands.
GRRR!3 will host international artists such as Pat Mills, one of the co-creators of the
2000 AD series and outstanding comic characters including Judge Dredd, a comics scriptwriter who has been active in the British scene since the early '70s. Mills is also a scriptwriter of the impressive anti-war chronicle comics
Charley's War and is currently involved in three comics series collaborations with French artists.
As a continuation of GRRR!'s collaboration with Oxford's Caption Convention, this year's GRRR! will host two British small press authors, Jeremy Dennis and Lee Kennedy. Also introduced will be European magazines/collectives/alternative publishers such as Inguine from Italy and two Austrian ventures, Tonto Comics from Graz and Mixer Comics from Vienna. Muhamed Kafedzic, a representative of the Sarajevo Comics School, will address the thesis that a passion for comics should be nurtured and encouraged among the new generations.
Following its premier show in Munich, an exhibition, "The Devil's Toonbox," will be presented as part of GRRR!3, curated by rock and comics journalist Martin Posset. This show consists of album covers (vinyl and CD) and other musical ephemera designed by underground cartoonists. Posset points to the connections between the music and comics scenes. Following that theme, a special guest of the Festival will be Slobodan Tisma (ex-Luna, La Strada), one of the Serbia's "off" scene cult musicians, whose music will be illuminated by drawings by Lee Kennedy in a live sketching performance.
A special feature of this year's GRRR! festival will be the Jacovitti exhibition, curated by comics editor and publisher Andrea Plazzi. This exhibition is in homage to Benito Jacovitti (1923-1997), one of the most respected and nuttiest Italian cartoonists and illustrators. (Jacovitti was also present in the Yugoslav press from the 1960s). Prints, publications and original drawings by the artist will be shown, together with works and an appearance by Nedeljko Bajalica, an Italian artist of Serbian origin, who was the maestro's assistant during a five-year collaboration.
Among GRRR!'s cameo exhibitions will be the "Body Comics" show, which came out of the spontaneous outburst of creativity at Tonto Comics Festival in Graz, where artists started to make photocopies of their own body parts adorned with comic drawings.
An exhibition of work by Serbian artists including Aleksandar Zograf, Wostok, Maja Veselinovic, Sasa Mihajlovic, Kosmoplovci, Letac, Vuk Palibrk, Kuhinja, Aleksandar Opacic, Bureq des Merdes, Looney and others, will be a chance for the audience to be introduced to the latest developments of the alternative comics scene in Serbia and Montenegro. During the festival, local production will be promoted via talks and presentations as well as through the projection of the short films by some of these authors.
In addition, the exhibition: Comics in Serbia 1945-1955 (curated by Zdravko Zupan) is the next installment in the series of GRRR! festival offerings produced to explore the historical heritage of Serbian comics. In this installment, postwar editions of Serbian comics, along with preserved original drawings will be on display. The postwar era was a difficult period when comics were criticized as being ideologically incorrect and sometimes banned by the censors of the newly-established government still under the heavy Soviet influence. Despite this, comics survived such unfavorable conditions and even some new magazines were started in Serbia. Through research by comics historian Zdravko Zupan, this heritage will be preserved and critically observed.
Zupan is also the curator of a small "In Memoriam" expo at GRRR!3 dedicated to Ratomir Ruvarac, one of the Belgrade's forgotten cartoonists, who died earlier this year.
As part of the additional program, for the 3rd time in a row GRRR! will host a program by Mr. Spiral, who works as a salesman in a local shoe shop in Pancevo. Mr. Spiral will present an exhibition of painted shoes and will ask other artists to join him in sharing the joys of decorating shoes at this special workshop.
Pancevo's weekly newspaper,
Pancevac, which has the highest print run of any local paper in Serbia and Montenegro, has proclaimed its office to be an Open Gallery where a show called "Everybody Reads Pancevac" will promote a new comics edition entitled 'Kais'. This is a collection of works by various artists whose comic strips have been published in
Pancevac.
Last but not least, Pancevo's pastry shop Popovic, which has been around since the 1930s, will for the first time host an exhibition. Gordana Basta will present her embroideries based on drawings by Aleksandar Zograf. Plus, free cakes will be served to everyone!
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