Each year the members of IAMHIST Council vote for prizes for the best articles by both an established scholar and a new scholar appearing in the Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television. 

Richard Abel won the 2021 David H. Culbert IAMHIST-Routledge Prize for the best essay by an established scholar for "The Middleman of the Movies: US Film Exchanges, 1915-1919.” This essay argues that the US film rental exchange -- too often neglected in cinema histories -- served as an essential link that ensured the efficient distribution of motion pictures, from production to exhibition. To support that argument, it offers a model of historiographical research by putting in play overlapping, multiple histories of the exchange and its operations from 1915 through 1919.