Sir Sydney Samuelson Dies: Former BAFTA Head And First British Film Commissioner Was 97
deadline.comBritish film industry veteran Sir Sydney Samuelson has died. He was 97. Samuelson died from old age on 14 December 2022. A statement from the British Film Institute said he was “surrounded by his loving family.” Samuelson was born on 7 December 1925.
He came from a UK film industry family. His father, George ‘Bertie’ Samuelson, was a producer of silent films, making more than 100 movies from 1910 onwards; his mother Marjorie ran a draper’s shop in Shoreham-by-Sea, Sussex.
Samuelson entered the film business in 1939 aged 14 in the projection box of the Luxor Cinema in Lancing, West Sussex, going on to work as a relief operator in several cinemas in the Midlands for ABC cinemas.
He then trained as a Film Editor with Gaumont British Newsreel in London. He was later a cinematographer and worked on many shows for the BBC and independent television companies on a range of productions, including Queen Elizabeth II’s Coronation at Westminster Abbey in 1953.
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