Mick Csáky, who has died of complications from leukaemia aged 77, was one of the documentary-makers outside the established television system who fought during the 1970s to get their independently made productions on screen.
The arrival of Channel 4, conceived as a commissioner of programmes rather than a producer, gave him his chance. He seized it firmly with Africa (1984), an eight-part examination of the continent and its society, from the civilisations of the Nile valley and east Africa’s links with Arabia and the east to slavery, decolonisation and South Africa.
The series was presented by the journalist Basil Davidson, an authority on the subject, but Csáky – as executive producer – mapped it out as history from an African point of view. He also directed one of the episodes, Caravans of Gold, about the source of the continent’s trade and wealth in the middle ages.
Throughout his career, he made films encompassing history, the arts and human stories. Among those he directed was Mozart in Turkey (2000), combining documentary with excerpts from Mozart’s Die Entführung aus dem Serail. Also its producer, he spent three years negotiating the staging of the opera in the Topkapi palace, Istanbul.
One project combining music and modern history was Africa Live: The Roll Back Malaria Concert (2005). Csáky conceived this ambitious production, featuring more than 100 African musicians performing in Senegal, with the singer-songwriter Youssou N’Dour. It achieved Csáky’s ambition of bringing the music to a worldwide TV audience and raising funds to combat malaria. Like the Mozart documentary, it was screened in Britain by the BBC.
Csáky was born in Shrewsbury, Shropshire, a twin brother to John, and one of the three sons of Mary (nee Baker), a botanist, and Alexander Csáky, a Hungarian immigrant, and grew up on a farm. When he was six, his father became fencing master and farm manager at Bedales school, Hampshire – which Mick attended – also designing and building stage sets for productions there.
Between 1963 and 1971, he studied at Farnham and St Martins art schools, and the Royal College of Art’s film school in London, where he shot and edited fellow students’ productions. At the same time, he was taking still photographs for installations at exhibitions and museums – an interest shared by his twin, who enjoyed a celebrated career designing for venues such as the V&A.
Csáky’s graduation film, Vox Pop, brought him to the attention of Humphrey Burton, editor of ITV’s arts series Aquarius. He joined the production team as a researcher in 1971 and worked the following year on a portrait of the sitar virtuoso Ravi Shankar and an episode including an interview with John Lennon, whose performance of Attica State abruptly ends when the former Beatle forgets the last verse.
With his first independent production company, Pictures That Move – and his wife, Jeanne Du Pasquier, an artist, whom he married in 1972 – Csáky produced and directed his own debut documentary, Berber (1972). Screened by Aquarius, it featured the folk music of Morocco’s indigenous people.
After Csáky left ITV to freelance, he had small successes as a producer-director at the BBC. Return to Hong Kong (1975) was presented by the journalist James Cameron for The World About Us series, while How Does It Feel? (1976) was an Omnibus programme with the composer Michael Tippett, the painter David Hockney and others talking about the creative role of the senses.
But independently made documentaries remained difficult to get on television and Csáky took charge of special projects at the corporate films business Viscom in 1975. He left to become chief executive of the publisher Mitchell Beazley’s newly formed television division six years later and began work on Africa, which was nominated for an Emmy award and won the New York Film & Television festival gold award.
Two major influences on his documentary-making were the 1970s BBC series The Ascent of Man, presented by the science historian Jacob Bronowski, and Life on Earth, David Attenborough’s account of the evolution of life. They made him want to make what he called subjects with a “long shelf-life”.
He ran his own independent production company Csáky Ltd from 1983, then Antelope Films from 1988 until 2020. He landed commissions from the BBC, ITV and Channel 4, sometimes mounting co-productions with foreign broadcasters to raise the necessary budgets.
Political and historical programmes he directed himself included Oil (1986), about its social, political and economic impact globally; Killing the Dragon (1988), on a radical cure for heroin addiction being administered by Buddhist monks in Thailand; and The Midas Touch (1990), exploring money in the modern world.
As a producer, Csáky worked on The Cuban Missile Crisis: Eyeball to Eyeball (1992, an Emmy award winner), Chairman Mao: The Last Emperor (1993), Hiroshima: The Decision to Drop the Bomb (1995) and 444 Days (1998), about the 1979 Iranian hostage crisis in Tehran.
When turning to opera to direct Placido Domingo: A Musical Life (1995), he gained extensive access to the tenor, who told him: “Your voice has to shine ... as a tenor, the day you lose that shine you have to stop.” Other arts programmes he directed included Chasing a Rainbow: The Life of Josephine Baker (1986), an International Emmy award winner, and a South Bank Show on Rudolf Nureyev (1991).
Between 1992 and 2000, Csáky was head of arts at Meridian, the south of England ITV company, and supplied it with programmes, including the regional arts and entertainment show The Pier.
Although documentary-making never made him rich, Csáky said he found it “very rewarding” in other ways, allowing him to tell the stories of many people and countries. One of his later programmes, The Godmother of Rock & Roll: Sister Rosetta Tharpe (2011), brought to a television audience the gospel singer who influenced Elvis Presley and Jerry Lee Lewis.
Csáky’s brother John died in 2007. He is survived by his wife, their children, Leo, Corinna and Tim, and eight grandchildren, and his younger brother, Adrian.
• Michael Sándor Csáky, producer and director, born 31 August 1945; died 26 July 2023
