Steve Pratt talks to the boss of Bafta, Amanda Berry, about her delight in keeping her Richmond artistic links alive

AMANDA BERRY has virtually lost her voice, thanks to a bad throat, but persists with both working and the interview anyway. This isn’t a good time of the year to be absent from her desk – as chief executive of Bafta (British Academy of Film and Television Arts) she’s busy with this year’s British Academy Film Awards, our equivalent of the Oscars.

She’s taking time off from organising the voting and awards ceremony at the Royal Opera House, in London’s Covent Garden next month, to talk about another project close to her heart.

Berry is a judge in a photographic competition at The Station, the award-winning facility in her North Yorkshire home town of Richmond that offers food, film and free exhibitions of art and photography.

“I just help them from time to time,” she says. “I’m from Richmond and remember when it was a station and think what they’ve done is extraordinary. They ring me up when they think my skills can be useful.”

Her contacts in the entertainment world – Bafta also has award ceremonies for TV, children’s programmes, video games and crafts – came in useful the last time they sought her help in a fund-raising project. Approached to be part of an art project, she asked as many famous people from Yorkshire as she could find to donate a piece of art. Michael Parkinson, Maureen Lipman, Sam Taylor-Wood and Michael Palin were among those who responded to the call.

“The thing what they do so brilliantly at the Station is come up with something a little bit different. I wasn’t going to ask these people to give money, but if they had a piece of art they’d be happy to donate. It was a unique ask,” she explains. She was a little apprehensive when asked to be on the judging panel, chaired by artist Joe Cornish, for Best Shots because she works in the moving image not still photography industry.

“But I really love photography. A still picture can tell a story that’s incredibly clever. Photography is so evocative, tells so many stories and so much about an individual. I used to think, ‘Why would I want a camera on my mobile phone?’ but I realise now that, whether people are being serious or not about taking photographs, it’s very accessible.

“Although Best Shots is not about the moving image, I was very supportive of what they wanted to do and the competition is open to photographers worldwide, just as the film awards recognise international film. As long as it can be seen in the UK, it’s eligible for nomination.

“What’s exciting is that it’s going to shine a very bright spotlight on The Station because it reaches out to a global audience and the exhibition is going to tour.”

The work of all 100 finalists will be on display in an eight-week summer exhibition at The Station before touring to Scotland, Wales and East Sussex.

She’s looking forward to seeing the entries.

“Photography is like art work – everyone will have a favourite style, possibly even subject matter. We use juries a lot at Bafta and you never know which way it’s going to go. But the process is fantastic and you’ll see so many different things among the entries.”

Judging Best Shots will be close to the Bafta Television Awards ceremony. That and the film awards – both high profile televised events – are well-known among the general public although she points out that Bafta also has around 250 public events each year too.

Since she joined Bafta in 1998, becoming chief executive two years later, both the organisation and the awards ceremonies have undergone major changes. Berry was behind the move to bring the film awards forward in the year to before the Oscars in the US. She also shifted the event from a cinema to the much larger Royal Opera House in Covent Garden.

AS a result, the Baftas have become a major part of the awards season mentioned as one of the big three film prizegiving events along with the Oscars and the Golden Globes.

“The day I think we’ve got everything right in the awards ceremonies, it’s time for me to move on. When you’ve done a job for a long time – and I’ve been here 14 years – you can get into a comfort zone and say we’ve always done it this way. That’s something I’m determined not to do. I have very much the same team delivering the awards each year, who question each other on why they do it this way,” she says.

During the ceremony you might catch her making notes on her Blackberry about how things have gone. “The next day we take a moment to recognise what went brilliantly but spend a lot more time on why this didn’t work or why this didn’t fly as high,” she says.

“We spend as much time debriefing as saying, ‘This is fantastic’. Everyone works incredibly hard and is so passionate that we do beat ourselves up about doing things that don’t work.

“I constantly have to set myself new challenges, otherwise I get bored and that’s when I fall out of love with what I’m doing. I constantly have to feel we’re evolving and changing.

That’s difficult in awards ceremonies because they have a format and flow, and there’s little you need to change.”

When we speak before Christmas, voting for the 2013 awards has gone live with 6,500 members considering the 246 films entered. Some categories are decided by jury, others by specialist chapters, the rest by the whole membership.

Distributors organise screenings and special events with actors and directors from all over the world arriving in London. She mentions Anthony Hopkins, Dustin Hoffman, Helen Mirren, directors Ang Lee and Pedro Almodovar as names that have been in town so far.

The Bafta nominations are announced on Tuesday, just a day ahead of the Oscar nominations – which have been brought forward a week this year.

“The Baftas are a well-received event globally and the UK is such a powerhouse in film if you look at the big films that have Brits behind them, whether it’s Christopher Nolan directing The Dark Knight or Les Miserables, made by a British film company and British director.”

You won’t get any tips who this year’s winners might be. She’ll have seen all the films by the time of the ceremony, but doesn’t vote. “I made that rule. I felt, as an employee of Bafta, I needed to be completely and utterly neutral,” she says.

  • The ceremony takes place on February 10.