I would like to thank STAR WARS INSIDER Editor Jonathan Wilkins for getting in touch with the UK's BAFTA film fellowship to inquire why the late film director Irvin Kershner, the brilliant director of the critical and audience acclaimed THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK, and numerous other wide ranging and diverse films over a fifty year career, wasn't included in the tribute section of this years BAFTA AWARDS ceremony shown on the BBC last weekend. For him not to have been included I felt was an absolute insult, and BAFTA's excuse being a lack of time to include him was outright PATHETIC! A four to six second clip from EMPIRE and a pic of Kershner could easily have been done. And it certainly could have been done if they had restrained the verbal diarrhoea that often came out of the shows long running and highly smug TV presenter Jonathan Ross at regular intervals. Kershner's non-inclusion as director of THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK is bad enough, but worse when you consider what a popular and acknowledged film-maker and teacher he had been to the likes of many of the talents within the film and TV industry in general. I rate this insult to his friends and family, STAR WARS and film fans in general as bad a situation as it was a few years back for classic STAR TREK fans when the late DeForest Kelly, an actor of some repute before playing their beloved Doctor McCoy, with a list of classic noir thrillers and westerns behind him, as well as the six TREK movies released theatrically across the world, was also not deemed good enough for inclusion by the US Academy Awards fellowship! That, like BAFTA's attitude towards Kershner, is equally unforgivable.
Shame on you, BAFTA!
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He also lived in Britain for a number of years too.
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