• 2/11/2004
  • London
  • Telegraph news

Midge Mackenzie, who has died aged 65, was a documentary film-maker, writer and historian of film; energetic and determined in all her endeavours, she made uncompromising, honest and stylish documentaries about feminism, human rights and child abuse as well as many other subjects.

With her habitual Stetson setting off flame red hair, tight jeans, extravagant rings and cowboy boots, Midge Mackenzie’s appearance reflected her originality and showmanship, but belied her strong principles and need to expose injustices. Film-making was her real passion, but in her work for the feminist and anti-apartheid movements in the 1960s and 1970s she cut a swathe, excited controversy and made a difference.

Margaret Rose Mackenzie was born in London on March 6 1938, the eldest of three children. After the war, which she spent in Dublin, cared for by a great-aunt, she attended a convent school in north London. But having been left to look after her brothers when her parents divorced, she was determined to escape her home life. She left school at 16 and went to work for an advertising agency in central London, which provided her with an entry into films.

Following a brief marriage to Peter Jepson-Henry, an antiques dealer, she moved to New York where she cut her teeth in film-making as a director of television commercials. Her reputation as a documentary film-maker was established in 1967, when her revolutionary, and widely acclaimed, multimedia Astarte for the Joffrey Ballet made the cover of Time magazine.

Three years later, she brought out Women Talking, a profile of the American feminists Sheila Allen and Kate Millet. Midge Mackenzie was a committed feminist, but she was uneasy with stereotypes and would attend women’s lib demonstrations swathed in fur. “There was no such thing,” she explained, “as politically correct then.” Indeed, at a screening of Women Talking at the ICA in London she included a striptease act.

She showed a similar readiness to court controversy the same year when she successfully staged a re-enactment of the Sharpeville massacre at the Lyceum in London, making full use of the theatre’s revolving stage and a contemporary soundtrack of the massacre.

In 1975 Midge Mackenzie released one of her most memorable works, Shoulder to Shoulder, a drama documentary series recounting the history of the Suffragettes, which she later turned into a book. Throughout the late 1960s and early 1970s she and her companion Frank Cvitanovich, a successful documentary film director, also made commercial films through their company Mohawk Films.

During this period, however, much of her time was taken up with their son, Luke (known as Bunny), who had been born prematurely, severely brain damaged and autistic. Midge Mackenzie unearthed a controversial “patterning” treatment then being pioneered in Pennsylvania, which required her son to have three helpers working on him for five hours every day.

It was a tribute to her resourcefulness, perseverance and organisational skills, and the vast network of acquaintances, friends and helpers she mustered, that the treatment was not only sustained but was successful. Bunny gained some coordination and balance, but died of cancer, aged 11, in 1978.

It was a time of extraordinary anguish for Midge Mackenzie. Her relationship with Cvitanovich had broken down and she had been diagnosed with breast cancer. But when she was offered a job teaching film history at Harvard University she managed to pick herself up and returned to America.

There followed a period of intellectual and professional fulfilment. An arresting sight on campus, hailing everyone with a cheery smile, and with her beloved dog, Tex, in tow, Midge Mackenzie loved teaching and relished the access Harvard provided to the intellectual heart of America.

A highlight of these years was the filming in Mexico of interviews with John Huston, talking about his suppressed war films; in 1999 she turned these interviews into a documentary for Channel Four.

In 1989 Midge Mackenzie returned to Britain, settling in Islington. There she would conduct long boozy lunches with her friends, surrounded by antique figurines and cans of archive film. She also continued to make documentaries that reflected her sense of community and social commitment.

Prisoners of Childhood, which she made in 1991, dealt with issues of child abuse through actors working with therapists to unlock their own childhood experiences. Three years later she set up the first Sheffield International Documentary Festival.

Her last finished work was a sensitive documentary about the London Hospital’s facial reconstruction unit and the portraits Mark Gilbert had been commissioned to paint of its patients. These featured in an exhibition, Saving Faces, at the National Portrait Gallery in 2002.

The challenges she faced with her son went some way to prepare her for the ordeal she endured with the recurrence of throat cancer early last year. Her many friends rallied round. Though reduced to scribbling notes in hospital, she never lost her interest in people and her surroundings, and she filmed many of her consultations and treatment.

Midge Mackenzie died on January 28, 2004