My husband, Terry Staples, who has died aged 75, was a teacher and one of the driving forces behind popular weekend screenings for children at the National Film Theatre in the 1980s.
Terry was born in Eastbourne, East Sussex. His father, Fred, had reserved occupation status as a carpenter during the second world war and travelled all over the country repairing bomb-damaged buildings. His mother, Doris, was determined to keep the family together so they all travelled with Fred, staying in lodgings. The family returned to Eastbourne after the war.
Like millions of other children, Terry enjoyed going to the Saturday morning pictures – in his case at the Luxor in Eastbourne. Sixty years later, he published All Pals Together (Edinburgh University Press 1997), a meticulously researched history of children’s cinema in Britain, which remains a standard text on this subject. Through research for this book he came across the story of the Barnsley public hall disaster of 1908, during which 16 children were killed in a crush at a film screening. Shortly before his death he was working on A Song for Little Children, a play based on the inquest into the tragedy.
After studying at the University of Birmingham and teaching English in South Korea for two years, Terry then taught the subject in several London secondary schools during the 1960s and it was during this time that we met.
We married in 1972 and Terry became head of English at Holloway school, Islington, where he led one of the Inner London Education Authority’s five local English centres. In 1979, when I was offered a job at the British Film Institute, we agreed that I would work while Terry would look after our two young children – an unusual choice at that time.
Having run school film clubs, Terry was invited in 1982 to develop weekend screenings for children at the National Film Theatre (now BFI Southbank). For the next 18 years, he programmed a huge variety of contemporary, historical and world cinema, attended and introduced every screening, and wrote all the programme notes in child-friendly language.
The popularity of “Junior NFT” proved that, far from being scared off by subtitles or unfamiliar material, children love to discover films that are new to them. From 1989 to 1992 Terry also curated the London Children’s film festival, through which he introduced British audiences to important directors such as Abbas Kiarostami and Hayao Miyazaki.
In the 90s Terry returned to teaching, this time in adult education, running access courses at City and Islington College. People who saw themselves as educational failures, or had recently arrived in the UK and needed qualifications to be able to work here, gained confidence, skills and academic success through his efforts.
Terry is survived by me, his children, Bennett and Phoebe, and his grandchildren, Morgan, Alfie and Connie.
