Mick Crosfield obituary-

Mick Crosfield, film-maker, has died aged 94. Mick Crosfield moved to Uganda with his South African wife and made films for the Department of Information.

My brother-in-law, Mick Crosfield, who has died aged 94, was a film-maker (in three continents), a shopkeeper (in London) and, throughout his widely varied life, a man of great practical engineering capability, of independent and courageous thought, and of many enthusiasms.

Born in Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire, Mick was one of six children of Eleanor Cadbury and Bertram Crosfield, both from leading Quaker families. Bertram was the managing director and co-proprietor of the Daily News.

Mick was studying engineering at Cambridge University when the second world war broke out. As a conscientious objector he served with the Friends Ambulance Unit, principally in China, where he transported medical supplies throughout the country, often on charcoal-fuelled lorries. In his later years, when his memory for recent events was fading, he spoke vividly of that time, starting with the flight from India "over the Hump" in an unpressurised plane without oxygen supply for the passengers, all of whom became unconscious.

After the war, Mick trained as a film-maker in London and was taken on as a researcher at the Film Producers Guild. On his first day, with typical gusto, he tore up and successfully rewrote a script he was handed, thereby earning himself an immediate move into first scriptwriting, then directing.

In 1951 he married the South African writer Noni Jabavu, then living in Britain, and adopted Noni's daughter, Tembi. In 1955 they moved to Uganda, where, although their marriage was legal (as it would not have been in South Africa under the race laws), it defied convention. He later delighted in finding out that he was on the Uganda Special Branch list of suspect persons, on the basis that he was one of the country's only two subscribers to the New Statesman.

Mick made films in the capital, Kampala, for the department of information, including How to Vote, explaining all aspects of the elections in Uganda. He and Noni moved to Jamaica in 1961, where Mick worked as films adviser to the government, directing, among other things, a film about the island's independence celebration, and where he had one of the several dramatic car crashes of his life (Mick was always a skilled but reckless driver of both cars and bicycles).

Returning to London in 1963, he co-founded an independent film company, Viewpoint Productions. He was twice nominated for Bafta best specialised film awards for The Radio Sky (1966); and The Slender Chance (1976). He bought and restored a house in Covent Garden, where he was a leading member of the movement that successfully opposed GLC plans to redevelop the area at the end of the 1960s, and where he opened the Copper Shop, selling high-quality copper wares – driving each week, very fast, to obtain his supplies from Birmingham.

Mick and Noni divorced in 1971. He married Sally the same year. They bought and restored a ruined stone house in Languedoc, in the south of France. Although Mick and Sally eventually separated, they remained close, and Sally tended to him with great devotion during his last years of ill health.

He is survived by Sally, their children Sophie and Sam, and five grandchildren.

[http://www.theguardian.com/film/2014/aug/05/mick-crosfield-obituary Callum McCarthy Tuesday 5 August 2014 17.59 BST]