Friends and colleagues pay tribute to Jim Hillier (1941-2014)

Wednesday, 27 August 2014

Jim Hillier

Jim Hillier, who was Senior Lecturer in Film in the Department of Film, Theatre & Television until his retirement in 2005, has died after a long battle with leukemia.

Jim was a brilliant teacher, wonderfully generous colleague and a widely admired film scholar. He was never one for looking back or for advertising his achievements, but Jim was also one of the pioneers of film education in Britain. It is easy to forget, now that film, television and media studies are widely represented in our universities, that the first undergraduate courses were only established in the 1970s. Before joining the Department of Film & Drama at Bulmershe College in 1979 Jim was a key member (and latterly Deputy Head) of the British Film Institute Educational Advisory Service at a time when the Service's work was establishing the basis for the development of film teaching in schools, further education colleges, and finally colleges of education and universities. While still at the BFI Jim became moderator of the first formal examinations in film, the AEB O/A level Film Studies course and maintained that commitment to work in schools when he joined Film & Drama by becoming moderator in the mid 1980s for the WJEC A-level in Film Studies. 

Jim loved cinema and delighted in its many forms and its varied cultural contexts. He had enviably broad areas of expertise, from Hollywood genres to documentary, from popular narrative to ‘art cinema' and the avant-garde, from South America to Scandanavia - not forgetting his great love of Indian cinema. At one time or another all his enthusiasms found their way into his teaching, hugely enriching the students' experience. Perhaps particularly notable was the way in which he made some of the most challenging of alternative forms in cinema accessible to students, encouraging them with great patience and good humour to discover the pleasures of unfamiliar worlds and ways of seeing.

Jim's publications reflected some of this remarkable variety. He co-authored the significant Studies in Documentary in 1972 and returned to documentary in his retirement as co-author of 100 Documentary Films (2009).  His monograph The New Hollywood (1993) was a major study of the changing Hollywood industry, notable for attention to television and to emergent strands of film-making by women and African Americans. Jim's edited work included American Independent Cinema (2001) and, most significantly, two highly praised and influential volumes of selected writing from Cahiers du Cinéma in English translation.  Jim very much enjoyed collaboration: in addition to the books on documentary he co-authored The Film Studies Dictionary (2001), 100 Films Noirs (2009) and 100 Film Musicals (2011). On the latter, he was determined from the outset that the book should include as many traditions of the musical as possible and it is wonderfully emblematic that in what became his final book Jim wrote about films from some fifteen countries.

For friends and colleagues an enduring image of Jim will be of him in shorts, in almost all weathers. At a time when such things were less common, he routinely cycled to and from work, and enjoyed long distance running.

Jim was Head of Department from 1996-2001, but was always resolutely informal, arriving for meetings bare-legged and with his characteristic cup of herbal tea in hand.  He combined passion with a gentle modesty, qualities that invited students to share his enthusiasm for cinema and encouraged their openness to new ideas. He cared about people as well as ideas, and sought the best in them.