Pat Masioni (D. R. Congo)
Patrice "Pat" Masioni was born in 1961 in the Democratic Republic of Congo. After his studies in the Arts Academy in Kinshasa, between 1987 and 1993 he published 8 albums for the Editions Saint Paul. He has also illustrated text-books, novels and has realised comics albums for children. Political refugee, Pat Masioni lives in France, where he has taken part in the realisation of the collective albums Afrobulles and A l'ombre du baobab. In 2002 he has won the Africa e Mediterraneo Prize with his Ô mon pays, published in the anthology Africa Comics 2002. He has recently realised an album on the genocide in Rwanda for Albin Michel.
His comic strip : The appeal
Horror instead of a party, the bullets' whistle replaces the music, desperate shouts rather than applause for a concert that will no longer take place. Ra-ta-ta-ta. Booom. K-pow. This seems the real and dramatic chronicle of one of those attacks that happen in every corner of the world and hurt innocent men and women.
This time it is "only" a comic story adapted from a novel by the brilliant Belgian writer Pascale Fonteneau. The appeal is but one step in the challenging path of the project Common values, and this specific story develops the parallel stories of two adolescents in the near future. On the one hand, there is Norman. In the time frame of only one day, Norman's feelings shifts from the winner's euphoria for a successful race, to the orphan's desperation for the loss of both his parents, who disappeared with many others during the riots. On the other there is Etchoki. Etchoki is a theatre director, whose only dreams have remained stuck to the wall in a poster of Paul Claudel's piéce.
Violence kills everything, joys, dreams and hopes. It gags life. Christophe N'galle Edimo, who besides his job as a scenarist is also an educator of minors at risk and the president of the association L'Afrique dessinée, succeeds in translating his experiences into direct and tense comic strips. The story and the scenario were then valued very effectively and precisely by Pat Masioni, who is getting more and more conscious of his artistic talent.
Sunday Bloody Sunday could be the ideal soundtrack for this story, which aspires at a different ending. Etchoki throws messages in the wind: balloons instead of the traditional bottles, but he knows that helium is not enough to change the world. The path of love, which has forgiveness as its corollary, is hard to take, but is the most effective one. "There is no peace without justice, there is no justice without forgiveness" says Etchoki. Stuff for real men. Inside and outside a balloon.
Technical information
Work features: fantasy
Pages: 28
Colour