My friend and collaborator Stephen Herbert, who has died aged 71, was a moving image historian who spent a number of years as head of technical services at the BFI Southbank cinema in London, also working for the BFI’s Museum of the Moving Image.
Later on, his knowledge of early visual media was sought out by academics, museums, programme makers and film producers, and his expertise in all things to do with the Victorian photographer Eadweard Muybridge led to a visiting research fellowship at Kingston University.
He also gave advice to moving image museums in Dubai and Qatar and was a technical consultant on Martin Scorsese’s film Hugo (2011), ensuring that its marvellous recreation of the studio of the French film pioneer Georges Méliès was authentic.
Stephen was born in south London to Albert, a factory worker, and Betty (nee Hinton), a nursery nurse. He went to Bec grammar school for boys in Tooting, and his first job was as a projectionist at the Imperial cinema in Battersea.
He then became an audio-visual technician at Wandsworth Technical College (later South Thames College) from 1973 to 1979, before taking on the role of film production technical supervisor at Goldsmiths’ College (1979-89), setting up and operating film (and later video) projection facilities in classrooms and supervising film degree students’ work.
He joined the National Film Theatre cinema (later known as BFI Southbank) in 1989, first as deputy head of technical services before being promoted to the top job, overseeing projection at the National Film Theatre and the London film festival. He thus became responsible for projection at one of the world’s leading cinematheques, with multiple film shows every day on formats ranging from 8mm to 70mm.
As part of his work there, Stephen also managed technical operations at the BFI’s Museum of the Moving Image, where he organised many popular, innovative shows. Before leaving the BFI, he and his partner, Mo Heard, set up a small business, The Projection Box, in Hastings, Sussex in 1994, to publish books about pre-cinema and early film. Among the volumes it published were some under Stephen’s name, including Industry, Liberty and a Vision (1998), a brilliant study of the inventor and political theorist Wordsworth Donisthorpe. A reference work, Who’s Who of Victorian Cinema, which he co-edited with me, was published by the BFI in 1996.
In his spare time Stephen indulged his passion for reviving past technologies by reconstructing all manner of things, from early film equipment and magic lanterns to flip books, model aeroplanes and pinball machines. In fact, he did what any projectionist does when they throw light on to a cinema screen: he made things come alive again.
He is survived by Mo, with whom he entered into a civil partnership in 2022, a daughter, Claire, from his 1976 marriage to Gillian Frier, which ended in divorce, and two grandchildren, Kameron and Eleanor.
