Phil Mottram obituary

http://www.theguardian.com/film/2014/jun/16/phil-mottram

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Phil Mottram, who has died aged 82, was for 40 years a guiding spirit of the London Film School. A warm, compassionate teacher with a dry, northern sense of humour, Phil devoted his life to the school, initially as a technical lecturer, later as lecturer in cinematography, as a course director, and, finally, as the school's administrator.

None of these job titles, however, does justice to his unique ability to screen a whole feature film, and before the very eyes of his students, to deconstruct and dissect it, reel by reel, sequence by sequence, scene by scene, shot by shot, and frame by frame, and, with remarkable insight, to identify takes, analyse directing, camera and editing decisions, and much else.

Born in Rusholme, Manchester, to primary school teacher parents, Phil was educated at De La Salle college in Salford, going on to Manchester University to start a zoology degree. Faced with strong family opposition to his relationship with Laura Hamilton, a bank clerk, he opted for financial independence by dropping out of university and joining the RAF. He and Laura embarked on what was to be 60 years of happy marriage and Phil rose to the rank of flight lieutenant, becoming a navigator and instructor, as well as successfully directing a number of RAF Shakespeare productions.

The London Film School began life as the London School of Film Technique in 1956 in rooms over a shop in Electric Avenue, Brixton. In 1959, after the RAF, Phil enrolled on the basic course, and, following a stint as a freelance cameraman, joined the school as a member of staff under its director, the endearingly eccentric Bob Dunbar. After several years in a decaying house in Charlotte Street, Fitzrovia, the school moved to an 18th-century banana warehouse in Covent Garden, where it still remains (though it is due to move to the Barbican Centre in the near future). While these premises were being cleaned out and stripped of rusting machinery, Phil delivered his film analysis lectures in the nearby pub, the Lamb and Flag.

In the 1970s, Phil managed to combine his teaching with occasionally shooting live acts, including Paul McCartney, the Animals, Georgie Fame and James Brown, as well as forming his own company, Tycho Electronics, to manufacture high end "squawk boxes" (speakers for film cutting-rooms).

After a successful decade during which the London Film School consolidated its identity as an international conservatoire, it suffered an inexplicable decline in numbers in the mid-70s, and went into liquidation. Dunbar departed, but Phil, undeterred, masterminded its resurrection as the London International Film School, with a new democratic constitution that empowered both staff and students.

Phil cared deeply for his students. London can be a daunting place, and many a forlorn new arrival from overseas would be fed and sheltered in his and Laura's warm family home in south London. When he became the school's administrator in the 90s, everybody agreed that the self-deprecating sign he put up in his office was entirely misplaced; borrowed from Shaw, it read: "Those who can, do; those who can't, teach; and those who can't teach, administrate."

Again, he steered the school through rough waters, solving a recruitment problem by setting up a website almost before websites existed. He successfully extracted funding from the Foundation for Sport and the Arts (now defunct), to remove what had become the bane of everybody's life, an interior vertical column that obstructed the school's two film studios and its cinema. He retired in 2000.

During the second world war, the infant Mottram had been evacuated for a year to a farm in Staffordshire. He fell in love with the countryside in general, and with the extraordinary village of Ilam in particular, with its Swiss chalet-style cottages and Gothic hall. Walking, birdwatching and a love of all things rural became a defining thread throughout Phil's life (he even managed an Open University degree in geology), but it was to Ilam that he constantly returned, painstakingly researching and documenting the history of the area. The fruits of his labours are now held at the William Salt Library at Stafford.

After his retirement, Phil put his customary zeal into two Ilam restoration projects, Francis Chantry's 1826 memorial to the vintner and patron of the arts David Pike Watts in the Church of the Holy Cross, and one of the most important neo-Gothic Grade II listed monuments in England, the Mary Watts Memorial Cross in the centre of the village. This had fallen into serious disrepair, and Phil devoted the last decade of his life to its full restoration, raising funds from multiple sources, and finally seeing his Ilam Cross Trust become finalists in the English Heritage Angel awards in 2011.

One of the beautifully carved replacement angels on the cross carries a banner bearing the inscription (in Latin), "PM restored me". The London Film School carries no such inscription, of course, but it would not be inappropriate if it did.

Phil is survived by Laura and his children, Catherine, Helen, Simon and Esther, and five grandchildren.

• Philip Sydney Henry Mottram, cinematographer, teacher and administrator, born 18 October 1931; died 28 May 2014