On International Women’s Day in 1971, 4,000 women, men and children marched through central London, demanding equal rights and equal pay for women. As a director and producer, Sue Crockford, who has died aged 76, led a team capturing the event: A Woman’s Place (1971) became the first British film about the women’s liberation movement.
Her documentary, which also covered the first national conference, at Ruskin College, Oxford, the previous year, provides an invaluable historical record.
It examined the movement’s demands, but also addressed stereotypes about feminists as humourless or uninterested in parenting, giving much attention to the conference creche (run by fathers) and the gaiety of the marchers, showing women dressed up for a satirical beauty pageant or singing the 1930s song Keep Young and Beautiful as they walked, accompanied by a gramophone of the period.
A Woman’s Place was Sue’s first film and, she later explained, “made me realise why I wanted to make films. I wanted to see whether other people could be engaged by what I believed in”. An interview with her about the making of the film is archived in the British Library’s Sisterhood and After oral history collection. She went on to produce nearly 50 documentaries and short films, was a campaigner and community activist, and helped shape Channel 4’s disability and children’s programming.
Sue grew up in Coulsdon, Surrey, the daughter of Patricia (nee Mead) and Herbert Crockford, who worked for the land registry. Time spent with her father exploring open spaces led to her later interest in gardens and woodlands. After attending the local girls’ grammar school, she studied English and fine art at Leeds University, also writing on contemporary film as part of her degree.
Her interest in theatre-making and political activism found expression in the late 60s through the London-based Angry Arts collective, which used cultural events and agitprop for political campaigns, including against the Vietnam war. Any public space could serve the antiwar cause; she remembered “war scenes” enacted for the benefit of horrified cinema queues.
In 1968 Sue helped create the “consciousness-raising” Tufnell Park Women’s Liberation Group. Articulate on camera, she was a regular media contributor on the women’s movement, and then with Liberation Films made A Woman’s Place.
Children and young people then became a focus of her professional life. For 14 years from 1971 she ran the Camden Town youth centre in Somers Town, King’s Cross, London, where she took responsibility for those who had been excluded from mainstream education. She co-founded the first gay teenage group there and led students on expeditions to the National Gallery, parks and even – although the trip was billed rather differently to the local authority – a commune in Scotland. Sue was unshockable and never patronising: implacable in her determination that the arts belong to everyone.
Other early work included setting up two hostels for homeless girls and, with other local parents, the experimental community nursery at Dartmouth Park, north London, about which she made the film One, Two, Three (1975), with her long-time collaborator Margaret Dickinson.
As she moved further into film-making she continued to explore topics in north London: Somerstown (1984), for Thames Television, was a social history combining contemporary interviews with 20s footage; while King’s Cross: David and Goliath (1992), for Channel 4, focused on opposition to redevelopment.
In 1985 Sue became an assistant commissioning editor in education for Channel 4, under Naomi Sargent. Over three years she developed Just 4 Fun, a half-hour slot each weekday for pre-school children, and also gave a platform to international animation. The open and creative atmosphere at the channel suited her perfectly.
Sue went on to develop Channel 4’s programming for deaf people; her project of film shorts British Sign Language: Four Fingers and a Thumb (1995) introduced sign language to a general audience. In 1996 she co-founded the Deaf Film and TV festival (later relaunched as Deaffest).
Her film work was wide in scope and always collaborative. She was proud of the drama-documentary The Rights of Man and the Wrongs of Woman (1989), starring Miranda Richardson as Mary Wollstonecraft, which was made for a Channel 4 series on political protest, and of Don’t Stop the Music (1998), in which the conductor Simon Rattle challenged government cuts to music education.
Full of ideas for collective action, Sue refused to temper her outrage at the world’s injustices, stood against militarism with the antiwar network Women in Black, and considered the arts as necessary as breathing. Yet she always did the practical work. A founding trustee of the charity support network Directory of Social Change, she remained on its board for 35 years.
Sue had two children: Barny, with the writer and director Tony Wickert, and Sky, with the furniture designer Adrian Swinstead. In later life, cancer left her with pain and limited mobility, but did not impair her wit, curiosity or generosity of spirit. She continued to open her home to family and friends of different generations, delighting in her grandchildren.
She attained a gardening qualification from the Royal Horticultural Society, encouraging her fellow students to join trade unions, and remained active in the Islington Labour party and the London Socialist Film Co-Op. From 2016 she was a driving force in the regeneration of her local park, Grenville Gardens, in Stroud Green.
Sue is survived by Barny and Sky, and by her grandchildren Amelie, Ida, Flo and Jacob.
• Susan Crockford, film-maker, born 20 February 1943; died 29 June 2019
