Workshops in PP

If you read this page regularly (and you should) you’d know that Khmer-French comic artist Séra has arrived in Cambodia, to premiere his new book, conduct workshops, and reconnect with his former home.

Piseth and I have been nudging artists from October 2005’s exhibition to come to the Café Litteraire on the 21^st, as well as help locate some students who are interested in visual storytelling.
We ‘sat in’ on his first workshop yesterday. It was a good structural underpinning of the basics of comics: where did the modern day form begin? Where does the name come from? What are vernacular comics in France and Cambodia?
After showing some examples of various old and current forms, we had a surprise in the showing of a short film, Chris Marker’s La Jetee. Comprised almost entirely of static images, it’s a good reminder that visual language is all about assembling a succession of images. Each image, each panel is like the blink of an eye and we interpret the flow.

After the workshop I’m a bit tired, like you feel when suddenly leaving a cinema after a good film. I guess I have. It’s also quite a good feeling to be talking about comics, I don’t get to talk about theory much here.