BAFTA Fellowship: Few Women, Few Outside UK/Hollywood, Steven Spielberg Before Ingmar Bergman, Federico Fellini, Billy Wilder (ALT Film Guide)

Andre Soares | Jan 4, 2012 |

Alfred Hitchcock, Psycho set

The first recipient of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts' Fellowship, "awarded in recognition of outstanding achievement in the art forms of the moving image," was director Alfred Hitchcock in 1971. Dozens of film, television, and assorted media personalities have become BAFTA Fellows since then, though the pattern here — as most elsewhere — is that achievements by men are deemed much more important than those by women. [Full list of BAFTA Fellowship recipients.]

The only woman to become a BAFTA Fellow in the Fellowship's first 25 years was television producer Grace Wyndham Goldie, a pioneer of Current Affairs programs on the BBC. Since then, that quite short list has gone on to include actresses Vanessa Redgrave, Julie Christie, Maggie Smith, Elizabeth Taylor, and Judi Dench; actress and sometime director Jeanne Moreau; editor Anne V. Coates; and actresses/writers Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders (whose latest Absolutely Fabulous episodes can be found online).

Also of lesser importance to the British Academy are achievements by those outside either the United Kingdom or Hollywood. Exceptions to this particular rule — all but one from Continental Europe — include the aforementioned actress/director Jeanne Moreau, French oceanographer/documentary filmmaker Jacques Cousteau, Japanese Nintendo video game designer Shigeru Miyamoto, and the following filmmakers: Andrzej Wajda (Poland), Federico Fellini (Italy), Ingmar Bergman (Sweden), and Abel Gance and Louis Malle (France).

Also of note is that comedians Eric Morecambe and Ernie Wise (1999) and Stanley Kubrick (2000) received their Fellowship after they were already dead. Steven Spielberg, on the other hand, got his Fellowship in 1986 — after being in the business for less than two decades. Spielberg, in fact, became a BAFTA Fellow before the likes of Federico Fellini, Ingmar Bergman, Alec Guinness, and Billy Wilder — who began his film career in the late 1920s.

It's also worth pointing out that in order for someone to be named a Fellow for his/her film achievements, it helps to either have a movie out or one about to come out. In 1986, Steven Spielberg had The Color Purple, his first "real" drama (i.e., not featuring sharks, high-speed chases, or outer-space creatures); 1978 Fellow Fred Zinnemann had Julia; 1982 Fellow Andrzej Wajda had Man of Iron (and the Solidarity Movement going on); 1989 Fellow Alec Guinness had Little Dorritt; 2001 Fellow Albert Finney had Erin Brockovich; and 2012 Fellow Martin Scorsese has Hugo. Even Alfred Hitchcock had Frenzy coming out in 1972, the year after he became a Fellow

http://www.altfg.com/blog/movie/bafta-fellowship-alfred-hitchcock-steven-spielberg-alec-guinness/