The best of the BAFTAs

BEST PICTURE – 12 Years a Slave (2013)

Scooping up the award for Best Picture was Steve McQueen’s 12 Years a Slave, set in the plantations of slave-era Louisiana. Dazed cover star Lupita Nyong’o is Patsey, a young slave who is an object of fixation for Master Epps (Michael Fassbender). The film is adapted from the autobiography of Solomon Northup, a free-born north American black man who was sold in chains into the south.

BRITISH CONTRIBUTION TO FILM – Peter Greenaway

Peter Greenaway won the prestigious British Contribution to Cinema award for over three decades of thought-provoking filmmaking, starting with his 1980 debut The Falls. "I feel that cinema at its very best is an artform of great sophistication and complication, which is capable of holding multiple meanings,” he mused in this passionate 2007 interview with Dazed's Tim Noakes. Well worth a revisit

BEST BRITISH FILM – Gravity (2013)

At the end of last year, we spoke to Alfonso Cuarón and Tim Webber about Gravity, shedding some light on their absurdist originality as they spilled a few secrets on the making of the emotional and visually perplexing technological wonder. Not only did they rack up BAFTAs for Best British Film, Best Cinematography, Best Special Visual Effects, Best Sound and Best Original Music, but Cuarón also won Best Director. Six is the magic number.

BEST ACTRESS – Cate Blanchett

AnOther’s 25th edition cover star, Cate Blanchett, left the BAFTAs with the Best Actress award for her stellar performance as Jasmine, a former Manhattan socialite abandoned by high society, in Woody Allen’s Blue Jasmine (2013). Although Jasmine is penniless and alone, she remains arrogant and deluded. It’s a classic Allen offering of human-led, compelling tragicomedy.

THE EE RISING STAR AWARD – Will Poulter

Will Poulter, who won the EE Rising Star award, voted for by the public, was selected by Hammer & Tongs’ Garth Jennings for Dazed back in October as one to watch. In the interview with the promising young British acto, we learned that he had, as a schoolboy, been saddled with both dyspraxia and dyslexia, and described himself as “destined not to achieve”. Poulter has since starred in a variety of films, the most recent being the big-budget comedy We’re the Millers (2013).

BEST PRODUCTION DESIGN – The Great Gatsby (2013)

Of course Baz Luhrmann’s explosive 3D film adaptation of F Scott Fitzgerald’s masterpiece was destined to pick up a BAFTA or two, winning an award for both Best Production Design and Best Costume Design. Eighteen months since Carey Mulligan finished filming the movie and took a break from acting, she was back in front of the camera for our January Dazed cover speaking about her latest role in Inside Llewyn Davis. “I don’t know why I was so freaked out!" she said, talking about her Gatsby-related anxiety dreams. "I guess I felt I’d been pretty under the radar up to that point, so Gatsby was scary. But nothing terrible happened.”