Culture | Macau Literary Festival kicks off

From Left: Filipe Melo, Dick Ng and Philippe Graton

The Macau Literary Festival 2017 “The Script Road” kicked off at the Old Court Building on Saturday, marking the sixth year that the book-centric celebration has been held in the city.

For the festival’s inaugural session, a discussion on comics as a representation of art was held at the Old Court Building on Saturday afternoon, moderated by MDT cartoonist Rodrigo de Matos. The talk, titled “Illustrating Words – The Art of Comics”, invited renowned comic book authors Dick Ng, Filipe Melo and Clément Baloup and the son of renowned comic creator Jean Graton, Philippe Graton, who continues to write the scripts for his father’s famous Michel Vaillant series.

Philippe Graton, who works mostly as a photographer, is exhibiting a series of his photographs at the Macau Literary Festival that mostly depict classic F1 drivers like Juan Manuel Fangio and Jacky Ickx, as well as others posing with his father, such as Teddy Yip in Macau.

A second exhibition features illustrations and some of the original plates made by Jean Graton from the 43rd issue of the Michel Vaillant series, titled “Rendezvous in Macau”. During the talk on Saturday, Graton talked about how his experience as a journalist collided with the attempt to write a comic plot for Michel Vaillant, when he was invited to do so by his father.

Clément Baloup testified to the trans-lingual nature of comics, adding that he was initially struck by their “communicative power”.

“Comics are something serious, even if they are funny,” said Baloup. “What struck me was the communicative power of comics […] I could make my voice clear [through comics] and my voice is direct.

One topic that came to dominate Saturday’s discussion was whether comic book making could be seen as an “act of resistance”. The proposition generated mild controversy with most of the participants in agreement but with differing views on the consequences of that understanding, leading as often in Macau, to the issue of self-censorship.

Dick Ng, who runs a Weibo microblog populated with his comics known for being absurd, nonsensical and humorous, politely disagreed with the consensus formed by the other participants.

The Shenzhen-based artist was initially reluctant to disclose an opinion on self-censorship, refusing to indicate whether he felt any pressure to regulate the output of his creative work.

However, after being pressed on the issue, Ng eventually said: “If you publish your book on the mainland, the government will censor [it] anyway – they [readers] may report you to the authorities – so it’s best to stay away from these topics.”

“For me, I wanted to focus on other topics [than political activism],” added Ng. “I will not touch those topics. The point for me in my drawings is to express my thoughts and ideas.”

The festival, which commenced on Saturday will run until March 19, featuring more than 60 guests from over 20 regions and countries. More than 100 sessions will be held throughout the festival period including seminars, film screenings and musical performances.

Local artist Eric Fok, who is known for his intricate map drawings of historical and modern Macau, was enlisted to create the festival’s artwork. The untitled cover work depicts a historical scene of Macau imprinted on an open book.

Mexia to lead translation talk

Today the festival continues at several venues across town. Among the highlights in today’s program is a seminar on translation in literature will be held this evening at 6 p.m. at the Old Court Building. The seminar, titled “Literary Translation – Gains and Losses”, invites Pedro Mexia, Chen Li and Benjamin Moser to discuss the topic. Mexia is a poet and essayist. He takes part in “Governo Sombra [Shadow Government],” a political analysis TV show in Portugal. He also serves as an adviser to the Portuguese President and was recently invited to judge the Camões Prize, the most important award for literature in the Portuguese language. The session will be held in English with Chinese translation.