BAFTA North America is launching a new set of awards, the BAFTA Honours, in Los Angeles this November. The event will see three honorees, selected across film, TV and video games, receive the iconic BAFTA mask.
Set for Sunday, Nov. 2, the new awards are meant to mark BAFTA’s continued mission to grow in the U.S., as well as the organization’s commitment to acknowledging the gaming industry at the same level as the film and TV communities.
“Over 20 years ago, we launched our Games Awards in London. So for decades, we’ve now been this trisector organization: having film, television and games as our major award ceremonies in the UK,” BAFTA North America executive director Courtney La Barge Bell told Variety. “We’ve also really been doing a lot of work to help our membership reflect that trisector, as well. BAFTA North America has had chapters in New York and LA since the 80s and 90s — and so we have always been this place where, globally, people that are at that intersection between the US and the UK across film, TV and games have been existing. It’s really what sets us apart, certainly in the US, among other academies.”
To date, BAFTA is the only major awards body that recognizes video games amongst TV Academy, Film Academy and most guilds. And this is even as the popularity of video game adaptations increases across Hollywood with success for “The Last of Us” (HBO), “Arcane” (Netflix), “Fallout” (Prime Video), “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” (Universal/Illumination) and “Minecraft” (Warner Bros.), among many titles in the works at studios, networks and streamers.
Recently, BAFTA North America has expanded its engagement with the gaming community with appearances at Games for Change in New York and Unreal Fest in Orlando, as well as the formation of a new BAFTA Games North America Committee.
“For us, we’re thinking about the screen industries, and those are our three primary mediums,” La Barge Bell added. “So this event is really exciting because we are putting games on the same platform as film and television. As we think about the future of creativity and the coming years, we know films are going to become more interactive, games already are incredibly cinematic and moving. And at BAFTA, because we have this history of being trisector, we also want to be a place where those conversations happen. And so with BAFTA Honours, we’re really excited just to be showing the creativity and the craft among these three.”
Ahead of the announcement of the BAFTA Honours, BAFTA North America recently opened full-voting membership up to those working in the gaming industry and applications will be open until August 14.
Per BAFTA North America, “Applicants do not need to be British or have previously won a BAFTA, but must demonstrate a substantial contribution to the UK screen arts, supported by their credits and career achievements.”
