Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Film historian dies.

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Posted by Stephen Furley (Member # 1277) on 08-11-2003, 07:22 AM:

Another film personality death to report, British film writer, historian and archivist John Huntly died on 7th August.

He served in the RAF during the 39-45 war, after which he worked in the music department at Denham Studios. During the late '40s he published a number of books on film-related subjects. After a somewhat crontroversial period at thh British Film Institute he combined his interests in music and film when he set up Huntley Film Archives, dealing mainly with music/entertainment and aircraft/railway/transport related subjects.

In recent years the running of the archive had been largly taken over by his daughter, Amanda, and other staff, but despite a long peoiod of ill-health continued to give his popular film shows until a few months ago; The final one was the at the Fairfield Halls in Croydon in March this year. The subjects, as with his first show 25 years previously, were 'Croydon Airport and the Crystal Palace'.

There is alengthly obituary to him in today's (August 11th) Guardian.

Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 08-11-2003, 09:25 AM:

Link to obituary...

To be fair, he had worked at the BFI for over a decade before the 'controversy' developed. It obviously went pretty deep: when I worked there almost two decades after he'd left it was still virtually forbidden to mention his name.