Rai, Cartoons on the Bay 2.1 from 3 to 8 December digital, live & hybrid. Presented the official poster that pays tribute to 30 years of Nathan Never
Cartoons on the Bay 2.1, the Festival of cross-media animation and children’s TV promoted by Rai and organized by Rai Com in collaboration with RaiPlay unveils its dates. It will be an edition with three souls: Digital, Live & Hybrid. Three different forms for a festival in continuous evolution, which will have most of its programming in streaming, but which this year also has as its goal three days of screenings in presence for the public of L’Aquila, from December 3 to 8, as a taste of the three years in which the Festival, from 2022, will be hosted in Abruzzo.
It is Andrea Cascioli who signed the poster for the 2021 edition, featuring Nathan Never, the hero of the Sergio Bonelli Editore stable, which celebrates its 30th anniversary on 18 June 2021. In fact, it was the same day in 1991 that saw the Alfa Special Agent arrive on Italian newsstands for the first time.
“With the presentation of the poster signed by the artist Andrea Cascioli, the 2021 edition of COTB starts, which sees us proceed with confidence on the road back to normality post-pandemic – says Teresa De Santis, president of Rai Com – The event will take place in fact in the great digital square of RaiPlay, increasingly frequented by a young audience. The languages and techniques of animated cartoons are entering powerfully into the debate on the evolution of the mechanisms of fiction and cinema, but also of marketing and advertising. Therefore, Cartoons on the Bay, as part of the Public Service, assumes a fundamental role as a moment of scouting to narrate and anticipate these new scenarios. The future is already present at the gates”.
The poster for Cartoons on The Bay 2.1 has been designed just like the cover of a Nathan Never album, with all the graphic elements that its readers have learned to recognize since the now legendary issue 1. At Nathan Never’s side we find his partner Sigmund Baginov, the computer genius of Agenzia Alfa. In the background the Punchinello of Cartoons on the Bay watches over both of them, while the comrades of the Alfa Agency and the posters of the previous editions of the Festival float in cyberspace.
“With the image of the 2.1 edition of COTB we wanted to pay homage to one of the most popular characters of Italian comics,” says Festival artistic director Roberto Genovesi. “For me, who in a previous life made both the role-playing game and the video game of Nathan Never, it’s a pleasant déjà vu and also a way to reaffirm COTB’s vocation as a festival where animation, comics and video games are part of the same DNA.”
The official poster of Cartoons on the Bay 2.1 represents a change of gear in the collaboration between the Festival and Sergio Bonelli Editore, which will be marked by a series of initiatives that will be announced in the coming months.
