Documentary maker who battled sexism in the film industry of postwar Britain and went on to work in continuity
The pioneering film-maker Kay Mander, who has died aged 98, was a member of the British documentary movement and began directing during the second world war, making training films and social documentaries for the Ministry of Information. In 1944, she established her own production company, Basic Films, and like many of her male contemporaries attempted to break into feature films after the war. But she struggled to find directing jobs and spent the rest of her long career in continuity.
Born in Hull, east Yorkshire, Mander grew up in Paris, later boarding at Queenwood ladies' college, in Eastbourne, East Sussex. After leaving school, she moved to Berlin, where her father was employed as an accountant. While working as a receptionist at an international film congress in 1935, she met British film-makers who suggested she look for work in London studios on her return to Britain. She secured a post at London Films, Alexander Korda's company in Denham, Buckinghamshire.
As soon as she walked on to a set, Mander knew she wanted to direct. It would be five years before she got behind a camera; instead she found herself in publicity, finance and continuity roles, sneaking into the studio whenever possible to learn what she could about film-making. She joined the Communist party and in 1937 the industry union ACT (now Bectu). Not only was she their first woman member, but in 1940 she was elected to the union's general council.
Advised that there were more opportunities for directing in the documentary movement due to wartime personnel shortages, Mander began going to its unofficial recruiting office – the Nellie Dean pub in Soho. There, in 1940, she met the producer Arthur Elton, who offered her a position at the Shell Film Unit. Within months, Mander was directing her first film, How to File (1941), for aircraft industry workers, regarded as an exemplary training tool. Her insistence that tracking shots be used to illustrate filing techniques was ahead of its time.
After three years at Shell, Mander moved to Paul Rotha Productions, then the Realist Film Unit, where she was able to experiment with the drama documentary style. She continued to make homefront propaganda films, often on dry technical subjects, depicted with simplicity and coherence.
On VE Day, Mander was editing Homes for the People (1945). Produced by Basic Films, the company Mander had formed with her husband, Rod Baxter, it was commissioned for the 1945 Labour party election campaign. Much of its running time is devoted to interviews with five housewives criticising their living conditions. Mander filmed the women performing tasks such as collecting water from a village well and carrying a pram down five flights of stairs to go shopping. Homes for the People was revolutionary in giving ordinary women a chance to plead their case for improved housing and provides a rare glimpse into everyday 1940s working-class life.
Basic Films gained a reputation for its educational output and in 1949 Mander won a British Film Academy (forerunner of the Bafta) award for La Famille Martin (1949), a French language teaching film. Encouraged by this recognition, Mander contacted the major studios asking to be considered "as a technician irrespective of her sex". Michael Balcon, at Ealing Studios, was not the only producer to reply that women could not handle a male film crew; although Mander had already been doing so for over 10 years. Disheartened, she joined her husband in Indonesia in 1950, establishing a film unit for Unesco and directing two films for the Children's Film Foundation.
She returned to Britain in 1957 to shoot her final film, The Kid from Canada. Not wanting to leave the industry, Mander spent the following years in film and television continuity. Among the films she worked on were Terence Young's Bond film, From Russia with Love (1963), François Truffaut's Fahrenheit 451 (1966) and Ken Russell's Tommy (1975).
Retiring in 1995, Mander moved to the Scottish countryside to concentrate on her own projects, including a script about the first world war poet Rupert Brooke. I knew her during this time and it was clear that her greatest passion in life was film. Stubbornly rejecting descriptions of herself as a feminist or a female film-maker, Mander thought of herself only as an inventive and dedicated technician who wanted to make inspiring work.
Rod died in 1978.
• Kathleen (Kay) Mander, film-maker, born 28 September 1915; died 29 December 2013