André Felix Vitus SingerOBEFRAI is a British documentary film-maker and an anthropologist. He is currently Chief Creative Officer of Spring Films Ltd of London, a Professorial Research Associate at the London School of Oriental and African Studies, and emeritus president of theRoyal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland where he was president from 2014 to 2018.
Born inLondon, he studied atUniversity Hall, Buckland, then atKeble College, and subsequently atExeter College, both atOxford University, under Professor SirE.E. Evans-Pritchard, specialising in Iran and Afghanistan for his doctorate. He started working in television in the early 1970s as a researcher, then as a producer and director for theDisappearing World series atGranada Television, eventually taking over from Brian Moser as the Series Editor.
His wife is anthropologist and writer Lynette Singer.[citation needed]
As a director, Singer has made many award–winning films, including theStrangers Abroad series,Khyber,Night Will Fall,Where the Wind Blew,Meeting Gorbachev with Werner Herzog, andWitchcraft Among theAzande.[1] In television he has worked for several broadcasters, serving as Commissioning editor forDiscovery Channel, Europe; Senior Vice-President forAlliance Atlantis; and heading the Independent Documentary Unit at theBBC.[citation needed]
At the BBC, he founded and commissioned works for theFine Cut series (which later became 'Storyville'), working with such international filmmakers asJean Rouch,Werner Herzog,D.A. Pennebaker,Bob Drew,Fred Wiseman andVikram Jayanti.[2]
In the independent sector, Singer has been instrumental in several production companies including InCa, Café Productions, West Park Pictures, and currently Spring Films.[3] He has been responsible in an executive or producer role for hundreds of documentary productions for cinema and television, including theOscar-nominatedPrisoner of Paradise (directed by Malcolm Clarke);Game Over: Kasparov and the Machine (Vikram Jayanti); theEmmy Award nominatedCity 40 (Samira Goetschel), and theInternational Critics Award-winning filmThe Wild Blue Yonder (Werner Herzog).[citation needed]
Since 1992, Singer has worked with Herzog as a producer or executive producer on sixteen productions, includingInto the Abyss (2011). He and Lucki Stipetic were producers for Herzog's documentary,Into the Inferno (2016), about mankind's relationship with volcanoes; and in 2019/20 onFireball : Visitors from Darker Worlds co-directed by Herzog and Clive Oppenheimer about the world of asteroids. He has (2018) co-directed with Werner Herzog a feature documentary about Mikhail Gorbachev calledMeeting Gorbachev based around several encounters between Herzog and the last President of the USSR. Singer was also an Executive Producer on the multi-award winning documentaries and Oscar Nominees,The Act of Killing (2012) and "The Look of Silence" (2014), by Joshua Oppenheimer.[citation needed]
His film as director, "Where the Wind Blew" (2017) about the legacy of nuclear bomb testing during the Cold War in Kazakhstan and Nevada won the Raven Award for Best Feature documentary at DocUtah, the Utah International Documentary Film Festival. An earlier film,Night Will Fall (2014), a documentary about the Holocaust that incorporates material made by the British Government in 1945, is described byStephen Fry as "incredibly dark, deep, disturbing, shocking and brilliant".[4]Night Will Fall was awarded twoFOCAL Awards, aPeabody Award, and Best Documentary at theMoscow Jewish Film Festival in 2015; it won theRoyal Television Society Award for Historical Documentary and theEmmy for Outstanding Historical Film (Long-form) in 2016. It was shown to over 70 million people world-wide.
Singer was given the Oscar Pomilio Award for Ethics in Pescara, Italy in 2015. He is the author of five books of non-fiction including, with his wife Lynette,Divine Magic : The World of the Supernatural. Singer was elected President of the Royal Anthropological Institute in 2014, was awarded their Patrons Medal in 2007.[5] and was given their Lifetime Achievement Award for film in 2021. He is Adjunct Professor of the Practice of Anthropology at theUniversity of Southern California.[6] and was Visiting Professor of Film at theUniversity of Westminster from 2014 - 2018. He was on the Film and Television Committee ofBAFTA, The British Academy of Film and Television Arts, between 2010 and 2013.
Singer was appointedOfficer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the2020 Birthday Honours for services to anthropology and the documentary film industry.[7]
