David Puttnam

David Puttnam

From 1994 to 2004 David Puttnam CBE was Vice President and Chair of Trustees at BAFTA and was awarded a BAFTA Fellowship in 2006. 

For over thirty years Puttnam was an independent producer of award-winning films including The Mission, The Killing Fields, Local Hero, Chariots of Fire, Midnight Express, Bugsy Malone and Memphis Belle, winning 25 BAFTAs, ten Oscars and a Palme D'Or.  He was awarded a CBE in 1982, a knighthood in 1995 and was appointed to the House of Lords in 1997. He retired from film production in 1998 to focus on his work in public policy as it relates to education, the environment, and the creative and communications industries. In 2012 he was appointed the UK Prime Minister's Trade Envoy to Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia and this year was appointed as International Ambassador for the World Wildlife Fund.

Here Puttnam discusses his introduction to BAFTA in the early 1970s alongside his contemporaries Alan Parker and Ridley Scott. As a recipient of the Michael Balcon Award for Outstanding British Contribution to Cinema in 1982 he recalls his friendship with both Balcon and Richard Attenborough.  He discusses his role in the Academy’s decision to embrace the world of interactive media and video games in the mid-1990s and reflects on the achievements of the current CEO Amanda Berry and COO Kevin Price and looks forward to BAFTA’s future.