The BAFTA Fellowship, or the Academy Fellowship, is a lifetime achievement award presented by the
British Academy of Film and Television Arts
The British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA, ) is an independent trade association and charity that supports, develops, and promotes the arts of film, television and video games in the United Kingdom. In addition to its annual awa ...
(BAFTA) in recognition of "outstanding achievement in the art forms of the moving image".
The award is the highest honour the Academy can bestow, and has been awarded annually since 1971.
Fellowship recipients have mainly been
film director
A film director or filmmaker is a person who controls a film's artistic and dramatic aspects and visualizes the screenplay (or script) while guiding the film crew and actors in the fulfillment of that Goal, vision. The director has a key role ...
s, but some have been awarded to
actor
An actor (masculine/gender-neutral), or actress (feminine), is a person who portrays a character in a production. The actor performs "in the flesh" in the traditional medium of the theatre or in modern media such as film, radio, and television. ...
s,
film
A film, also known as a movie or motion picture, is a work of visual art that simulates experiences and otherwise communicates ideas, stories, perceptions, emotions, or atmosphere through the use of moving images that are generally, sinc ...
/
television producers,
cinematographer
The cinematographer or director of photography (sometimes shortened to DP or DOP) is the person responsible for the recording of a film, television production, music video or other live-action piece. The cinematographer is the chief of the camera ...
s,
film editor
Film editing is both a creative and a technical part of the post-production process of filmmaking. The term is derived from the traditional process of working with film stock, film which increasingly involves the use Digital cinema, of digital ...
s,
screenwriter
A screenwriter (also called scriptwriter, scribe, or scenarist) is a person who practices the craft of writing for visual mass media, known as screenwriting. These can include short films, feature-length films, television programs, television ...
s, and (since 2007) contributors to the
video game
A video game or computer game is an electronic game that involves interaction with a user interface or input device (such as a joystick, game controller, controller, computer keyboard, keyboard, or motion sensing device) to generate visual fe ...
industry. In 2002,
Merchant Ivory Productions became the first organisation to win the award. People from the United Kingdom dominate the list, but it includes over a dozen U.S. citizens and several from other countries in Europe, though none of the latter have been recognized since 1996. In 2010,
Shigeru Miyamoto
is a Japanese video game designer, video game producer, producer and Creative director#Video games, game director at Nintendo, where he has served as one of its representative directors as an executive since 2002. Widely regarded as one o ...
became the first citizen of an Asian country to receive the award.
The inaugural recipient of the award was the filmmaker and producer
Alfred Hitchcock
Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock (13 August 1899 – 29 April 1980) was an English film director. He is widely regarded as one of the most influential figures in the history of cinema. In a career spanning six decades, he directed over 50 featu ...
. The award has been made posthumously to the comedy pair
Morecambe and Wise in 1999, and to
Stanley Kubrick, who died that year and was made a fellow in 2000.
Rolf Harris
Rolf Harris (30 March 1930 – 10 May 2023) was an Australian musician, television personality, painter, and actor. He used a variety of instruments in his performances, notably the didgeridoo and the Stylophone, and is credited with the inventi ...
is the only person to have had the award subsequently annulled.
Recipients
References
External links
BAFTA official site
Fellows of BAFTA
Full List of BAFTA Fellows
{{featured list
British Academy Film Awards
Lifetime achievement awards
Awards established in 1971
1971 establishments in the United Kingdom
Awards for best video game