BRIAN TUFANO

(1 December 1939 - 12 January 2023)

In his day the British cinematographer Brian Tufano worked with many celebrated directors, including Ken Russell, Stephen Frears, Ridley Scott, Franc Roddam, Danny Boyle, Stephen Daldry, Fred Schepisi and Shane Meadows. In 2001 Tufano, who has died aged 83, won a Bafta for Outstanding Contribution to Film and TV and was given an Evening Standard British Film Award.

He was born in Shepherd’s Bush, west London, to Antonio Tufano, an Italian barber, and his wife Alice. Evacuated to Wales during the war, he became interested in films. Back in Shepherd’s Bush, he haunted the nearby BBC Lime Grove studios where his mother got him a job as projectionist. Becoming a qualified cameraman, it was at the BBC that Tufano shot Ken Russell’s Isadora Duncan film, an episode of Thirty-Minute Theatre, the miniseries The Search for the Nile, and Stephen Frears’ Three Men in a Boat.

The first feature film he worked on was Jack Gold’s The Sailor’s Return with Tom Bell, in 1978. Then he shot Franc Roddam’s Quadrophenia, covering the 1963 Mods and Rockers fights, their bikes, their leathers and their drugs, plus the music of The Who. Tufano then went to the States, working with cinematographer Jordan Cronenweth on Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner. With Franc Roddam again he shot The Lords of Discipline and War Party.

Always exhibiting great imagination, he first worked with Danny Boyle on the TV miniseries Mr Wroe’s Virgins in 1993, and they later did Shallow Grave, Trainspotting, A Life Less Ordinary and Alien Love Triangle. Tufano was nominated by Bafta for his photography and lighting on Anthony Page’s BBC Middlemarch in 1994, and with director Ferdinand Fairfax he shot The Choir for TV and True Blue, the Oxford & Cambridge Boat Race film. Damian O'Donnell’s East is East, an adaptation of Ayub Khan-Din’s play, was a huge success both critically and commercially and it won the Best British Film Award at Bafta in 1999.

Stephen Daldry’s Billy Elliot went up for three Academy Awards, while Tufano’s cinematography was nominated by Bafta. With Manhaj Huda he made four films, Jump Boy, Kidulthood, Adulthood and Everywhere and Nowhere. Graham Swift’s novel Last Orders, about old friends meeting to scatter their pal’s ashes in Margate, had a starry cast of Michael Caine, Tom Courtenay, David Hemmings, Bob Hoskins, Helen Mirren and Ray Winstone, and was directed by Fred Schepisi. This was followed by Shane Meadows’ Once Upon a Time in the Midlands with Robert Carlyle.

Brian Tufano became Head of Cinematography at the National Film and TV School in Beaconsfield from 2003, and before he died was a Teaching Fellow there too. In 1964 he married Pamela Copeland and they have a daughter, Kate. After their divorce, Tufano was married to Sarah Pykett from 2005 until his death.

MICHAEL DARVELL