Witold Starecki moved to Britain in 1984.
Witold Starecki, who has died of cancer aged 64, made documentaries that glowed with humour and humanity. He started his film-making career in Poland after graduating from the National Film School in Lodz. In 1984, he was encouraged to move to Britain by Roger Mills, then editor of the BBC's documentary series 40 Minutes. Witold had a film he wanted to shoot about the treatment of mental patients in Poland, but even he, with all his subtle skills, had been unable to slide it past the censors of state television. Mills invited him to make it under the BBC's aegis.
Broadcast later that year, Asylum was a triumph: a painfully beautiful portrait of patients from a mental hospital near the Soviet border. Their only break from the bleakness of the asylum was to work for local peasants until they were too ill or too old to continue. Viewers could read their own message into it about the state of the Soviet empire.
Witold's family was originally from Lviv, now in Ukraine. Towards the end of the second world war, they found themselves being shunted around in cattle trucks by the Soviet army until they landed up in the coal-mining area of Silesia, where Witold was born. His early films in Britain had echoes of that upbringing under the Soviet system, where ingenuity was the ticket to survival. They shone a wry but sympathetic light on to a world which his new audience had then experienced only through the cold war they saw on the news.
Commissioning editors vied with each other to get Witold to work for them because his films stood out so clearly: original in design, beautifully shot and intensely humane. Among many masterpieces from those years were Forget-Me-Not (1985), about the first Miss Poland beauty competition; Dog Eat Dog (1993), about animal smuggling in Russia; and True Love Waits (1995), about people who were trying to promote chastity among teenagers.
In the late 90s, the stream began to dry up. His ambition to break new ground every time he set off with a camera meant his proposals did not fit easily into the business plans of a new generation of channel schedulers who preferred life delivered to them in proven formats. He found it harder to get the commissions he wanted and turned instead to teaching, as a senior lecturer in media studies at Thames Valley University (now the University of West London). Typically, he approached this new role not as second best but as a challenge, bringing to the task the ability of a great director to coax the unexpected out of his pupils. But he was disappointed by the way television was not only changing its face but also the aspirations of those who entered it.
As rare as his gift for film-making was his gift for friendship. I met him in the late 1980s, when he was already something of a legend for his charm, poker skills and wild skiing. One Christmas, he founded what he called his Herring Club, based on a Polish custom (so he said) which allowed the men to go off "to check the herrings" while the women prepared the feast. Every year, Witold assembled another gathering, old regulars spiced with new, to report what had touched them in the year and to return home gently soused. By last Christmas, he knew he was dying. But everything he said was suffused with his usual warmth, wit and almost old-fashioned politeness.
His partner for 16 years was the film-maker Sue Bourne. They had a daughter, Holly, and remained close friends even after they separated. He is survived by Holly, Basia (his daughter from an earlier relationship), his mother, Selena, his sister, Gosia, and his partner, Emma.
• Witold Starecki, film-maker, born 26 January 1947; died 15 July 2011
Broadcast later that year, Asylum was a triumph: a painfully beautiful portrait of patients from a mental hospital near the Soviet border. Their only break from the bleakness of the asylum was to work for local peasants until they were too ill or too old to continue. Viewers could read their own message into it about the state of the Soviet empire.
Witold's family was originally from Lviv, now in Ukraine. Towards the end of the second world war, they found themselves being shunted around in cattle trucks by the Soviet army until they landed up in the coal-mining area of Silesia, where Witold was born. His early films in Britain had echoes of that upbringing under the Soviet system, where ingenuity was the ticket to survival. They shone a wry but sympathetic light on to a world which his new audience had then experienced only through the cold war they saw on the news.
Commissioning editors vied with each other to get Witold to work for them because his films stood out so clearly: original in design, beautifully shot and intensely humane. Among many masterpieces from those years were Forget-Me-Not (1985), about the first Miss Poland beauty competition; Dog Eat Dog (1993), about animal smuggling in Russia; and True Love Waits (1995), about people who were trying to promote chastity among teenagers.
In the late 90s, the stream began to dry up. His ambition to break new ground every time he set off with a camera meant his proposals did not fit easily into the business plans of a new generation of channel schedulers who preferred life delivered to them in proven formats. He found it harder to get the commissions he wanted and turned instead to teaching, as a senior lecturer in media studies at Thames Valley University (now the University of West London). Typically, he approached this new role not as second best but as a challenge, bringing to the task the ability of a great director to coax the unexpected out of his pupils. But he was disappointed by the way television was not only changing its face but also the aspirations of those who entered it.
As rare as his gift for film-making was his gift for friendship. I met him in the late 1980s, when he was already something of a legend for his charm, poker skills and wild skiing. One Christmas, he founded what he called his Herring Club, based on a Polish custom (so he said) which allowed the men to go off "to check the herrings" while the women prepared the feast. Every year, Witold assembled another gathering, old regulars spiced with new, to report what had touched them in the year and to return home gently soused. By last Christmas, he knew he was dying. But everything he said was suffused with his usual warmth, wit and almost old-fashioned politeness.
His partner for 16 years was the film-maker Sue Bourne. They had a daughter, Holly, and remained close friends even after they separated. He is survived by Holly, Basia (his daughter from an earlier relationship), his mother, Selena, his sister, Gosia, and his partner, Emma.
• Witold Starecki, film-maker, born 26 January 1947; died 15 July 2011
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