My friend James Leahy, who has died aged 83, played a key role in the growth of film studies in the UK, and of independent film culture more widely. His work spanned screenwriting, acting, scholarly research and teaching – most notably as head of the film department at the Slade School of Fine Art, London, for a decade from 1971.

Born in Heston, Middlesex, to Irish parents, James Leahy, who had served in the first world war, and his wife, Beryl (nee Bennett), James was educated at Merchant Taylors’ school, Rickmansworth, and in 1957 went to St John’s College, Cambridge. His subject was anthropology, but he also studied film as a strong unofficial sideline.

Unlike Britain, America already offered the chance to study film academically, and James took that chance, undertaking graduate work in film studies at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, and publishing a book on the director Joseph Losey. He stayed on there as a lecturer from 1966 to 1971.

In the US he made made contacts in the film industry – including a collaboration with the Hollywood director Nicholas Ray – as well as continuing his academic research and teaching.

James returned to Britain in 1971 and became director of the Slade film unit (now part of University College London). The school pioneered combining film-making with film studies, instead of dividing artistic from critical practice. This was an exciting time in film studies, which was still developing as an academic subject in the UK. James expanded the department, attracting overseas students and developing postgraduate studies, making it a vibrant centre for the subject.

I was one of many of that Slade generation who were helped by James’s programme to find rewarding work in film production, or academia, or both. Sadly, the film unit closed in 1983. From that point, James worked as a busy and versatile freelancer.

With its director, Ken McMullen, he co-wrote 1871, a feature film for Channel 4 (1990) based on the Paris Commune, the revolutionary socialist government that ruled Paris briefly in that year. He asked his friend the Mauritanian director Med Hondo to play Karl Marx; casting a black actor in the role was as inspired as it was unexpected. James also took acting roles, in Noel Burch’s Correction Please (1979) and in Laura Mulvey and Peter Wollen’s Crystal Gazing (1982).

He continued his academic work, writing essays for periodicals. In 1993 he became one of several founding editors of Vertigo film magazine. When that closed in 2012, he continued to write for the Australian film site Senses of Cinema and ran his own blog, Leahylooksatfilms, from his home in the Barbican, London.

In 1968 James married Gaila Jonaitis, and she survives him.