Playwright Plater was recovering from surgery and had not written anything for three months. Minghella told him he must get well soon because "we need you working, we need you to tell us how to think and what to feel".

Minghella signed off in his usual way, with the words "love you madly, Ant".

A week later, on March 17 this year, Minghella died following surgery for cancer of the tonsils and neck.

Plater shared this story on Friday when he returned to Hull to dedicate a new drama studio to his friend.

Speaking before the dedication of the studio, Plater said: "That was the sort of person Anthony was. He never even mentioned that he was ill when he wrote, he wanted to just ask about how I was feeling."

Plater, born in the North East but raised in Hull, was back in the city for the first time since Minghella's death, to open the new £100,000 studio.

It is a testament to the important relationship and continuing depth of feeling for the film director at the university where he first studied drama, that there was standing room only at the dedication of the new theatre.

Students and staff at the university had turned out en masse to pay tribute to Minghella, who learned his craft in Hull.

"There are not really any words that are appropriate for an event like this," said Plater.

"It grieves me more than I can explain that I am here, dedicating this building to a brilliant man, generations younger than me."

Minghella shot to nationwide fame in 1990 with the BBC film he wrote and directed, Truly, Madly, Deeply, which starred Juliet Stevenson and Alan Rickman. He went on to achieve international fame in 1996 when he won an Academy Award for directing The English Patient. He went on to make films including The Talented Mr Ripley and Cold Mountain.

But long before the awards and the international recognition, Minghella's friends in Hull knew that he was something special.

Tony Meech, who was first Minghella's tutor, then colleague and friend, remembers him as a young man. He said: "Anthony had been here for six months before I arrived and became his teacher.

"My very first recollection of him was seeing him dressed in an absurd green costume, underneath this mop of black hair, playing the keyboard on stage. I think he was supposed to be a frog in this particular production.

"I also remember him playing the piano for 48 hours as part of a fund-raising that he had dreamed up. He was a very keen pianist and the department's piano was quite old and needed replacing – so he contacted a music store in town and staged this 48-hour charity event – and the money he raised bought a new piano for the department."

When he arrived in Hull, Minghella had only a small knowledge of drama, but within the year was one of the department's most energetic and diligent students. He went on to achieve first class honours.

In his final year at university, those around Minghella realised that they were in the presence of someone with a rare talent.

He staged a self-written piece called Mobius The Stripper, based on the philosophical writings of Gabriel Josipovici.

"He wrote the script, wrote the music, played the music, directed and appeared in this philosophical musical," says Meech.

"It was a brilliant piece of writing and was staged here at the university and then down at the Spring Street theatre that became Hull Truck.

"It summed up Anthony's brilliance. The three things that came together in him that you don't often find in one person were this brilliant creativity and originality and a blinding intelligence. Mobius was this amazingly creative product, that come out of a highly developed understanding of complex intellectual ideas."

Minghella arrived in Hull in 1972, the son of Italian parents who raised him on the Isle of Wight where the family ran an ice cream shop. After graduating, he spent a year researching Samuel Beckett for a further degree and went on to teach at the university for seven years. Minghella was impressed by a particular group of female drama students, but felt that there were few plays available to truly express their talents, so he set about writing his own piece for them.

After spending a fortnight in his home town with the students, he wrote the play Whale Music for them, which went on to be produced in London, and won Minghella the first of his many professional awards, the London Theatre Critics Circle Award for most promising playwright in 1984.

On Friday, Minghella's parents Gloria and Edward and sister were due to attend the ceremony, but contacted the university to say that it was still too soon after Minghella's death to attend such a public event. They hope to go to the university and the studio for a private visit at some time in the future.

In a letter to Meech, Minghella's sister Gioia wrote: "It's just too emotional a journey for (my parents) and, although they were obviously touched and delighted by the honour you are paying Anthony, and so wanted to be there, they feel now that they aren't yet ready to come to Hull and deal with all that that would entail in terms of grief and memory.

"He was very lucky to have you all, wasn't he? Almost as lucky as we were to have him."

She added: "Meeting Alan Plater was momentous for Anthony. He was thrilled and inspired – that's not too strong a word – and it gave him courage".

Plater first met Minghella when the film-maker was still a student.

Now a visiting lecturer at the university, Plater told the audience at the ceremony: "I had an arrangement where if someone on the degree course showed an interest in writing they could come and see me. My first memory of him was of this absolutely beautiful young man, with this thick black hair coming to see me with this script," says Plater.

"I read his work and said: 'Young man, you are a very good writer, go away and stop bothering me'."

Minghella and Plater continued to "bother" each other through their professional careers, swapping scripts and even teaching together at an Arvon foundation course.

As soon as he saw Minghella's work Plater knew that the writer would make a name for himself.

"I think you can spot talent a very long way off," said Plater.

"The thing about his writing was that it was remarkably mature. Most writers' early work, including my own, is about themselves, about what it is to be them as a young writer. He was writing already at a young age about other people and doing so brilliantly."

Also at the dedication ceremony was choreographer Jonathan Lunn, who studied at Hull University, arriving when Minghella was in his final year.

He told the current students about Minghella's energy and work ethic, how he would play piano for Lunn and a group of other drama students who wanted to practise dance, every day for an hour at 8.15am. He said: "Here in the drama department we created our own little private heaven. I wish we were here to celebrate a life lived to its fullest. Instead, Anthony's life will be celebrated as a life lived to the full, but cut cruelly short."

As he unveiled a photograph of Minghella, which will remain on a wall of the new studio theatre, Plater told the students of today that they were the "spiritual and creative sons of daughters of Minghella" and that they must "fill this theatre with their imaginations".

Pulling back the curtain to reveal the photograph, he added: "We love you madly mate."