The 12 th SRN Conference held in Porto in September 2019 saw the launch of the first ever SRN AWARDS. The idea of the Awards was approved by SRN members at the 2018 AGM to acknowledge the importance of screenwriting research and publications within this field.
The Awards were in two categories (Best Monograph $500; and Best Journal Article $100).
A Call for Nominations was circulated during the course of the last academic year; by the deadline of 15 June 2019 we had received several nominations in both categories and copies of each were sent to the Jury members consisting of esteemed colleagues Jill Nelmes, Janet Staiger and Tom Stempel.
They Jury was unanimous in their evaluation. Here are the winners and the jury’s comments:
BEST MONOGRAPH – J.J. Murphy, Rewriting Indie Movies: Improvisation, Psychodrama, and the Screenplay, Columbia University Press, 2019
“A wide ranging, very perceptive analysis of how improvisation and psychodrama are used in contemporary American independent films. Murphy is observant about how those techniques are combined with scriptwriting to enrich important but lesser known US films. His work here expands on his previous book, Me and You and Memento and Fargo: How Independent Screenplays Work.”
You can find further details on JJ’s book here.
BEST ARTICLE – “Writing from the Margins of Media: Screenwriting Practice and Discourse During the First Indian Talkies”, BioScope: South Asian Screen Studies, 9:2, 2018
“An excellent overview that goes beyond what little research has been done in the area: thetransition to sound films in India. Sengupta is particularly good at showing the connections between Indian theatre and the early talkies, and he provides detailed accounts of scripting protocols of the period.”
You can find Rakesh’s article here.
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Congratulations to JJ Murphy and Rakesh Sengupta!
The SRN Awards will come back at the 2020 SRN Conference in Oxford for publicationswith a release date comprised between 1 June 2019 and 31 May 2020.
A Call for Nominations and submission guidelines will be posted on the website.