The fourth edition of the Grand Prix Nova International
Radio Drama and Short Forms Festival , organised under the high patronage of
Her Royal Highness Princess Margareta of Romania, was preceded by a press
conference chaired by Attila Vizauer, the Director of the Radio Drama
Department of the Romanian Radio Broadcasting Corporation. 41 productions from
around the world have already been short-listed for this year’s edition of
Grand Prix Nova, a festival which has enjoyed a huge success and has brought
radio drama into the focus of attention again.
Attila Vizauer: It is a competition which will
turn out to be very difficult for the jury. I admit, when the short-listing was
made, apart from selecting the 41 productions running in the competition, we
also made a pre-classification and noticed that many important productions
would compete for the first three places this year. We have productions from
Australia, Iran, Russia, many European and overseas productions, from Canada,
for instance. We shouldn’t forget that last year a Canadian production won the
first place in the ‘short forms’ section. Consequently, anything is possible
now, the list is open.
The Grand Prix
Nova International Radio Drama Festival
boasts a prestigious jury this year, too. The members of the jury are:
Katerina Rathouska, the Director of the Radio Drama and Literature Department
of the Czech Radio Broadcasting Corporation and a Euradio member, Vijay Sadhu,
Senior Executive, Programming Asia-Pacific Broadcasting Union (ABU), Dimitri
Plax, a Swedish artist, composer and radio drama producer and the Italian
composer, author and performer Stefano Giannotti, who attended Grand Prix Nova for the first time in 2015.
The 2016
edition of Grand Prix Nova celebrates the DADA centennial by two exquisite
shows, as Attila Vizauer has underlined: The Dada centennial has become a topic for
radio productions. There are two very interesting productions this year.
It is interesting how people perceive this phenomenon 100 years on, and how
foreigners speak about the Dada phenomenon, which seems to have remained in the
cultural memory of the Swiss or the Serbs, for instance. All this has given me the idea of
organising, within the Grand Prix Nova Festival, a workshop devoted to the Dada
centennial, during which we will also present two productions. One is ‘Dada Cabaret’, the title of Mihai
Lungeanu’s script after Matei Vişniec’s play. The second production, equally
interesting, I even dare say unique, is ‘Fuchsiada’ by Urmuz, a new type of
writer, who wrote that genre of literature, concurrently with the Dadaists.
Between May 31
and June 5, the Grand Hotel Continental in Bucharest will host public auditions
of the radio shows nominated for Grand Prix Nova. Productions from such
countries as Belgium, Germany, France, Spain, the Czech Republic, Russia,
Switzerland, Iran, Australia and Canada will be presented to the public on the
competition days. At the end of this year’s edition, the Award Gala will be
hosted by the Elisabeta Palace in Bucharest. Also, as a first in Romanian radio
drama, scripts by the world famous director Federico Fellini will be adapted
for radio.