My husband, Tony Nicholls, who has died aged 81, was a documentary maker, activist and video consultant. During his career, he worked on many hundreds of projects, including TV documentaries, feature films, commercials and education videos.
Tony integrated his professional production work with a commitment to teaching. While he worked in higher education, including as course leader in media at Bedford College (1995-2005), he especially enjoyed working with schools and community groups. He was also a video consultant and trainer for the UN, working in Pakistan, Ghana, Ethiopia, and with many organisations in Nigeria (1992-2000).
Born in Biggleswade, Bedfordshire, Tony was the son of Betty (nee Stokes) and Clifford Nicholls, who was in the RAF. The family moved many times in England, Scotland, Kenya and Egypt before Tony was 14, finally settling in Kingsbury, north-west London, in 1958, where Tony attended Kingsbury County grammar school.
He and his friends became a force to be reckoned with, setting up the local Young Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament branch in 1960, and in 1962 joining the Young Communist League and the Communist party. The same year Tony was sent to Reading prison for three weeks for “obstructing a policeman” at Greenham Common.
In 1963, in search of models of socialist living, Tony stayed in kibbutzim in Israel. During this time he became a keen photographer, and, still a member of the Communist party, on his return to the UK Tony began working as a photographer for the Morning Star newspaper (1965-69), through which he travelled in the then closed communist countries, including Russia, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria and Albania. He also covered a sports match for the paper that led to one of his photos making the cover of Private Eye, in 1969.
In 1972, Tony was accepted on to the newly founded National Film School in Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire, to study documentary film-making. A man ahead of his time, in one of his student films he explored hidden cameras in cities that enabled governments to follow and collect data on the inhabitants.
Following graduation, Tony worked as a camera assistant on two features, and edited a film on projects in Chad for Christian Aid. He then worked as a director and cameraman for Liberation Films, producing health education films, community arts documentaries and campaign videos for various organisations.
He went to produce six one-hour documentaries for Channel 4 on the history of trade in tea, sugar and coffee (1983-85); he made educational and promotional documentaries in Nigeria and Ethiopia and produced and directed Music and Musicians of the Commonwealth (1993), a film of a gala concert for Queen Elizabeth at Lancaster House, commissioned by the Royal Overseas League.
As well as his position at Bedford, he lectured at the North London and City polytechnics, and the American College in London.
We met in 1989 and in 1993 our son, George, was born. We married in 1998.
He is survived by me and George, and by his brothers, Phillip and Geoffrey.
