Remembering Joost Hunningher (1941-2026)
Written by Peter Hort.
Joost Hunningher was born in the Netherlands in 1941. In 1948 he moved with his family to New York, where his father had been appointed Queen Wilhelmina Professor for the History, Language, and Literature of the Netherlands at Columbia University.
A neighbour who was growing up in the same apartment block shared Joost’s interest in film, and regularly borrowed Joost’s film camera: this was the young Walter Murch. They remained friends all their lives.
In 1967 Joost was appointed to run the film course at the Polytechnic of Central London (PCL), which in 1992 became The University of Westminster. In 1969 the course became the UK’s first BA degree in film, offering a blend of production and academic film theory, and Joost continued to lead it for 39 years, up to his retirement in 2006.
He looked outwards and internationally as he developed the curriculum, with the course joining CILECT, the international association of film schools, in the 1970s. From 2002–2006, Joost was Chair of the Digital-Cinema Research Group for CILECT and he organised workshops and two conferences on the new digital film technologies at this crucial moment in their development.
Together with Yossi Bal, he founded the Nahemi Eat Our Shorts film festival in 2002.
Filmmakers he taught include the director Asif Kapadia, the writers Tony Grisoni and Neal Purvis, the cinematographer Seamus McGarvey and the producer Paul Trijbits.
He made films for the Royal Shakespeare Company, the University of Westminster and the World Expo City Culture Pavilion, Shanghai, and directed two plays for the Soho Poly. In 1996, he was director of the Lumière Festival, which celebrated the 100th anniversary of the first British cinema screening by the Lumière brothers in February 1896, at the Regent Street Polytechnic as the university was then called.
He contributed chapters to the University’s publications Cinema: the Beginnings and the Future (1996) and The Magic Screen-A History of the Regent Street Cinema (2015).
He was an iconic figure in British film education, with a warm, wonderful and mischievous personality that influenced generations of students and film makers.