11 apr. 2024 Award Winners Announcement | the janovics centre awards
The Janovics Center Award for Outstanding Humanities Research in Transnational Film and Theatre Studies is yearly awarded to publications that advance transnational research in the fields of film and theatre studies and employ innovative methods in the humanities. The Juries awarding these works were composed of Professors Daniela Berghahn, Royal Holloway, University of London; Vinzenz Hediger, Goethe University, Frankfurt; and Andrea Virginás, Babes-Bolyai University, Cluj (for film studies); and Professors Naoko Kogo, Osaka University; Athena Stourna, University of the Peloponnese, Athens; and Ilinca Todoruț, Babes-Bolyai University, Cluj (for theatre studies).
BEST BOOK IN THEATRE STUDIES 2024:
Multilingual Dramaturgies: Towards New European Theatre by Kasia Lech, Springer International Publishing, 2024.
Jury accolade: With its transnational scope and vivid writing style, Kasia Lech’s Multilingual Dramaturgies: Towards New European Theatre presents a clear and compelling framework for understanding and practicing multilingual dramaturgies. Challenging the prevailing monolingual approach in most European theatres, Lech introduces the concept of critical multilingualism as both an artistic and institutional practice. Multilingual dramaturgies encourage theatre-makers and audiences to embrace otherness by valuing the unknown and approaching performance relationally and contextually. Drawing insightfully on fields such as linguistics, psychology, and institutional analysis, the book builds a persuasive argument for adopting multilingual dramaturgies. The combination of theoretical chapters, case studies, and interviews enriches its analysis, offering readers a wide-ranging exploration of perspectives.
BEST ARTICLE of 2024:
“Feminism in Post-dictatorship Iberian Cinemas: Monique Rutler and Cecilia Bartolomé” by Mariana Liz, published in Studies in European Cinema, 2024.
Jury accolade: The article makes an original contribution to the field of women’s film history. Taking a transnationally comparative approach to Portuguese and Spanish cinema during the 1970s and eighties, Mariana Liz examines feminism in the post-dictatorship era and the dialectical tensions between nationalism and cosmopolitanism. The analyses of Rutler’s Sleight of Hand and Bartolomé’s Let’s Go, Barbara are nuanced and embedded in rich socio-historical detail and a discussion of women’s filmmaking during these decades. Liz’s essay is a fascinating read that delineates how middle-brow cinema is closely linked to female and peripheral filmmaking styles and practices.
The Jury also decided to award two SPECIAL MENTIONS for best book and article:
Refocus: The Films of Agnieszka Holland by Elzbieta Ostrowska, Edinburgh University Press.
Jury accolade: Through close textual and contextual analyses (paying attention to production contexts and modes of circulation) of Holland’s films along the three intersecting axes of authorship, women’s cinema and transnational cinema, this study yields original insights that go far beyond a conventional auteur cinema approach. Based on meticulous research, Refocus: The Films of Agnieszka Holland traces the fragmented, hard-to-narrativize history of Eastern European fictional filmmaking.
“Audience Impact of European Co-production: The Case of Quo Vadis, Aida?” by Petar Mitric & Tamara Kolaric, published by Cinema and Cie, 2024.
Jury accolade: The article uses a combined methodology of historical interpretation, close textual analysis and audience studies. It adapts theoretical frameworks from the study of theatre audiences to propose the notion of an “ideal European co-production”. The authors address the important issue of transnational reception by outlining the obstacles faced by European films when watched (or not, as the case may be) across borders. Their well-chosen case study, Quo Vadis, Aida?, not only examines how this “Bosnian” film engaged Serbian spectators but also makes an important contribution to the politics of memory and the ongoing contestations since the Balkan Wars.
The Janovics Center congratulates the authors and will organize book presentations and talks related to their work on May 21, 2025.
Further details on the award and related events will be available on the Center’s website, under News and Events and on social media.