York alumnus nominated for BAFTA

Posted on 30 April 2015

A former University of York music student, now an award-winning composer, director and filmmaker, has been nominated for a BAFTA.

Benjamin Till & Nathan Taylor's wedding (credit: Gabrielle Motola)

Benjamin Till, who graduated from York in 1995, is nominated for a television award in ‘Specialist Factual’ for his film Our Gay Wedding: The Musical. Up against David Attenborough and Grayson Perry, the awards ceremony takes place on 10 May.

Broadcast on Channel 4, Our Gay Wedding: the Musical is about Benjamin’s Till’s wedding to his partner Nathan Taylor, an actor and West End performer. Taking place on 29 March 2014, the first day that LGBT people could marry in England and Wales, the ceremony was performed entirely in song.

Winning the prestigious Grierson Award for Best Entertaining Documentary in 2014, the film has also been nominated for seven further major awards, including the Royal Television Society Award for Best Arts programme and the Guardian Television Moment of the Year.

Benjamin Till’s other work includes the musical Brass, performed at the Leeds City Varieties in August 2014. This won the UK Theatre Award for Best Musical Production, the same award won by the musical Matilda in 2011.

Benjamin Till said: “Simply being nominated for a BAFTA is one of those career-defining moments that you never really expect to happen, so when it does, it’s fairly hard to process. Being nominated for your wedding takes everything into a place of deep surrealism.

“I am so pleased the film has done well. It is thrilling to note the leaps and bounds we’ve made towards equality in my lifetime alone. Being gay was illegal in England less than ten years before I was born, and yet, I was able to marry the man I love on prime time television at the age of 40.

“York was one of the key reasons why I do what I do today. I never got a sense that there were any boundaries when I was studying there. Everyone I knew seemed to be more creative than the next person! They were halcyon - and defining days. I think the University experience had a direct effect on my career. Everything I have done professionally has shared that sense of scale and spectacle… the same sense that anything was and is possible.”

Further information:

For more information about Benjamin Till, visit: http://www.benjamintill.com/
For further information about the University of York’s Department of Music, visit: http://www.york.ac.uk/music/