BilBolBul, the Comics Festival, continues until February with online meetings dedicated to 2020 graphic novels.
On Friday 18 December at 6.30 pm (streaming on the website www.bilbolbul.net or on the official YouTube channel of the Festival), Alex Bodea, a Romanian author transplanted to Berlin, will be guest, whose works have been published, among others, on The Guardian and Tagesspiegel .
In dialogue with cartoonists Alice Milani and Emanuele Rosso, Bodea presents its “The Fact Finder” (BeccoGiallo Editore). A graphic novel that moves on the horizon of a dystopian world, shaken by a mysterious optical phenomenon called Intrux that makes objects, animals and people blurry until they disappear.
The protagonist, Mr. Hesus, a middle-aged immigrant who struggles to integrate into the host country, seems to be the only one immune to the strange phenomenon: so, with the help of the android Alois, he embarks on the task of visually translating the world that risks becoming irretrievably illegible. He not only reads the Intrux, but links each of them to a story fished out of his memory, drawing us into a modern Decameron. The mission makes him feel important, useful and listened to, but this condition is not destined to last: the government is in fact about to launch an application that will monopolize the reading of the Intrux, making Mr. Hesus’ personal, comic and touching stories obsolete. Will Hesus be able to maintain his new condition, or will he go back to being an ordinary stranger, ignored and despised?
All the titles presented are on sale in a network of independent bookstores, not only in Bologna but also in Rome, Turin, Milan, Venice and Bari: a way to circulate the most interesting titles also to support the bookstores, which have lived moments of difficulty but they have also been able to reorganize themselves and become territorial cultural centers of great importance, thanks to the ability to activate themselves with home delivery services and online sales.
Alex Bodea was born in Romania, she graduated from the University of Art and Design in Cluj-Napoca. She lives in Berlin, where she runs The Fact Finder gallery-cultural space. Her work moves between visual art, comics and reportage. Some of her stories have been published in The Guardian, Stripburger, Tagesspiegel and in the Romanian feminist magazine Cutra.
