Nuvola comics: success for the first comics festival in Catanzaro
Catanzaro – Vincenzo Filosa wins the first edition of the Gianni De Luca Award. The recognition established as part of Nuvola, the first comics, games and art festival in the city of Catanzaro, was awarded yesterday evening at the San Giovanni monumental complex at the end of three days of great success and participation . Laura De Luca, journalist and custodian and curator of her father’s archive, also took part in the delivery ceremony.
Gianni De Luca, cartoonist, illustrator, painter and engraver, originally from Gagliato, is universally recognized as one of the greatest masters of the ninth art, to which he dedicated most of his experiments. The winner of the prize – which consists of an artistic artefact created by the student of the Academy of Fine Arts of Catanzaro Alois Arruzza – was selected by a technical jury composed of Donatella Monteverdi (Culture Councilor of the Municipality of Catanzaro), Virgilio Piccari (President Academy of Fine Arts of Catanzaro), Tito Faraci (Cartoonist, writer, editor of the Feltrinelli Comics series), Andrea Mazzotta (Journalist and expert in comics art), Laura De Luca (Journalist, artist and daughter of Gianni De Luca).
The motivation
The Gianni De Luca Prize, first edition, is awarded to the Crotone artist Vincenzo Filosa. “Because he was able to create an ideal bridge, an embrace, between East and West, through a skillful mix of the different stylistic registers of the Italian and Japanese tradition, both from a narrative and graphic point of view. With his latest work, Il Saraceno, Vincenzo Filosa has made complex imagery accessible to the younger generations, simplifying the most difficult themes without ever trivializing them. But above all he was able to guide us in the direction of a high and visionary project of comics art, following in the footsteps of the great masters of world comics and of Japanese culture in particular.”
The cosplay gathering, presentations and games
The awards ceremony took place at the end of a long and well-attended day that began at 10 am with the “One Piece” themed treasure hunt and the colorful invasion of cosplayers from all over Calabria. After the performances that took place on the Sandro Pertini terrace of the San Giovanni monumental complex, the Nuvola Comics jury decreed the winners of the contest in the “best cosplay”, “best performance” and “best tailoring” categories. The performances and costumes proposed by the participants colored the first edition of the regional contest in the city of Catanzaro with fun, joy and art. There was also great participation in the seminar on Manga held by maestro Vincenzo Filosa. And then the giant games on the Sandro Pertini terrace organized by the Joka Calabria association and the board games organized by Antro del Troll.
The morning continued in the cloister, the talk area of Nuvola, with the presentation of the graphic novel “Officine del macello, la decimazione della Brigata Catanzaro” with the authors Elettra Stamboulis and Gianluca Costantini. The event, moderated by the journalist Bruno Mirante, saw the participation of the scholar Mario Saccà and the historian Salvatore Bullotta. In the afternoon, the presentation of issue zero of the Giallo China magazine took place with the participation of the editorial director Laura Papa and the screenwriter Giulia Biondino. Afterwards, the artist Gianluca Costantini presented the graphic novel “Julian Assange. Together with the journalists Andrea Celia Magno and Antonio Liotta. From hacker ethics to Wikileaks”.
