My friend Margaret Henry, who has died aged 80, was a film-maker and teacher with a passionate belief in fighting for a world free of racism and injustice.
She taught documentary and screenwriting at the London College of Printing from 1994 to 2002, and was then head of screenwriting at the London Film Academy until 2008. She had a significant influence on a generation of film-makers, particularly for her work as a researcher on Blacks Britannica , a landmark film by David Koff (to whom she was previously married) about racism in 1970s Britain.
Released in June 1978, the film was heavily censored before it was broadcast in the US on Boston’s WGBH television channel. It is largely thanks to Margaret’s efforts that an uncensored, digitalised copy is available today.
In 1984 she produced Struggles for Black Community, a series of four documentary films for Channel 4, directed by Colin Prescod. Each film focused on one community: Tiger Bay (now Cardiff Bay) in Cardiff, Southall and Ladbroke Grove in west London , and Leicester. She also directed Invisible Workers for Channel 4 in 1987, a film about migrant workers from Colombia, Turkey and the Philippines.
Born in New York , Margaret was the daughter of Marie (nee Curnen), a librarian, and David Henry, director of admissions at Harvard, where he founded a scholarship scheme for African students at Harvard.
Following a progressive education at Putney school in Vermont, she studied at the University of California in Berkeley from 1960 to 1964, where she threw herself into the struggle for civil rights. An attempt to smuggle fugitive Black Panthers across state lines led to a serious car crash and a lifetime of back trouble.
While at Berkeley, in 1962 Margaret married Koff and travelled with him to southern Africa. The marriage was short-lived, but the two remained friends and he was an important influence in her life, as was her subsequent relationship with the radical Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano .
In 1968 she came to London, where she met her second husband, Duncan Smith, and had two children, Caleb and Hannah. Their home, filled with discussions about art and politics, was a magnet for radical thinkers and creatives. They later separated, and eventually divorced in 2010.
Margaret’s career as a film-maker led her to travel extensively. She visited Eritrea several times through the 1980s, taking photographs of female Eritrean fighters and making enduring friendships. At the height of the Bosnian war, Margaret became active in the German-based FrauenAnstiftung, a feminist organisation that supported women in eastern Europe.
In 2004, Margaret’s involvement in an initiative called Reel Peace led her to deliver a film course in Sri Lanka, where she met her third husband, Prasanna Ratnayake. After numerous visa complications, they married in 2011, and established Postcolonial Films. Prasanna remastered the Struggles for Black Community series, along with Blacks Britannica, before his sudden death in 2017 .
In spite of ill health, Margaret remained engaged with world affairs, and with friends, family and former students. She is survived by Caleb and Hannah, and her three grandchildren, Amelie, Quillan and Honora.
Loading comments…