Duncan Jones '95 Wins BAFTA Award for Directorial Debut

Wooster alum garners "British Oscar" for first feature film

WOOSTER, Ohio, Feb. 22 -- The British Academy of Film and Television Arts has honored Duncan Jones ’95 with a 2010 Film Award for Outstanding Debut by a British Writer, Director or Producer. The award is the British equivalent of an Oscar and recognizes Jones for his first feature film, Moon, which opened to critical acclaim on both sides of the Atlantic last summer.

Set in the near future, Moon tells the story of Sam Bell, a man in the final days of a three-year stint working alone at a lunar mining base. Because of a malfunctioning satellite, Sam can only send and receive taped messages to his wife and three-year-old daughter back on earth. His only “conversations” are with Gerty, the base’s well-intentioned but uncomplicated computer.

“Moon is about alienation,” Jones says. “It’s about how we anthropomorphize technology; it’s about the paranoia that strikes when you are in a long distance relationship; and it’s about learning to accept yourself.

Jones traces some of the issues he grapples with in Moon back to his Independent Study project at Wooster, “How to Kill Your Computer Friend: An Investigation of the Mind/Body Problem and How It Relates to the Hypothetical Creation of a Thinking Machine.”

“I majored in philosophy both at Wooster and later, in graduate school at Vanderbilt, and there are some interesting ideas in Moon that come out of lectures and studies I did with Professor Ron Hustwit and Professor Hank Kreuzman,” Jones says.

In an interview immediately after accepting the award, Jones said he starts work on his second feature film next week.