UAE | Heritage and Culture

World of comics comes alive in Abu Dhabi

The world of comics came alive yesterday with the opening of the First Abu Dhabi International Festival of Comic Strips at the Cultural Foundation.

  • By Rania Habib, Staff Reporter
  • Published: 00:00 March 28, 2007
  • Gulf News

  • Image Credit: Ahmed Kutty/Gulf News
  • Shaikh Nahyan after opening the comic strip festival at the Cultural Foundation in Abu Dhabi.

Abu Dhabi: The world of comics came alive yesterday with the opening of the First Abu Dhabi International Festival of Comic Strips at the Cultural Foundation.

The four-day festival features artists from the UAE, the region, Japan, France and Belgium among others. Majed magazine, the 29-year-old UAE based magazine, is the event's local guest of honour, while Japanese manga artist Oshima is the festival's international guest of honour.

The creators of Freej, the animated series about four UAE national grandmothers that took the UAE by storm during last Ramadan, are also present at the comic-strips festival.

"When we aired our first episode, people expected something completely different," says Khalid Abu Hmidan, relationship manager for Lammtara Pictures, producers of Freej.

"People either loved it or hated it, but by the third episode, we got a great response.

"The country is opening up to animation. We are working on 15 more epi-sodes for next Ramadan, and in August we will release last year's episodes on DVDs which will be subtitled in English."

Shaikh Nahyan Bin Mub-arak Al Nahyan, Minister of Higher Education and Scientific Research, earlier toured the festival with organisers and artists.

Prizes were awarded during yesterday's opening ceremony to artists in various categories, from professional to amateur. Shaikh Nah-yan presented awards to university and primary and secondary school students for their drawing skills.

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