Allan Segal also known asAllan Fear-Segal (16 April 1941 – 8 February 2012) was aBAFTA-winning documentary film maker. He spent the majority of his career working for Granada Television.[1]
His house inHampstead was a regular haunt of left-leaning intellectuals in the 1970s and 1980s;Michael Foot chose to film his first televised interview asLeader of the Labour Party (UK) from its kitchen.[2]
Having started his career at theBBC, in 1972 he was poached byGranada Television to act as a producer on the investigative current affairs programmeWorld In Action. Over the next five years, he produced and directed over twenty films, all over the world, and often in hostile circumstances necessitating the use of hidden cameras and undercover filming.
In 1976, Segal and a small film crew risked life imprisonment by posing as tourists and illegally filming in Brezhnev'sUSSR. Using one of the first-ever amateur8 mm film cameras, they shot "A Calculated Risk",[3] the story of JewishrefusenikNatan Sharansky (who went on to becomeDeputy Prime Minister of Israel) and his campaign to leave for the state of Israel.
In 1979 Segal was appointed as Editor ofWorld In Action. His editorship saw the broadcast of the notorious "The Steel Papers"[4] programme, which prompted aHouse of Lords legal dispute, and almost led to his and several otherGranada Television directors' imprisonment because of the programme's steadfast refusal to reveal the identity of the source of the confidential documents relating to theBritish Steel Corporation strike on which the programme was centred.[5]
Between 1990 and 1992 Segal acted as the series editor of the international, multimillion-dollar documentary series "Dinosaur", presented by legendaryCBS anchormanWalter Cronkite. The series aired in the United States on theA&E Network, onORF in Austria, Primedia in Canada, SATEL in Germany andITV in the UK. At the time, the series achieved the highest audience figures of any documentary shown on A&E, and remains one of the highest-rated documentary series of all time.
After his retirement from programme making Allan Segal taught as a university lecturer and Professor ofMedia Studies at theUniversity of East Anglia, Norwich,Dickinson College, Carlisle, US, andJamia Millia Islamia, Delhi, India.
Many of Segal's films were shot from the frontline. In 1973, whilst reporting theYom Kippur War, he was part of a convoy ofITV journalists that was narrowly missed by a Syrianwire-guided missile.David Elstein recorded in his memoir that the vehicles were only missed because a few moments prior to the missile strike Segal had insisted that the convoy be halted so that he could "relieve himself in the shade, under a tree".[6]Nicholas Tomalin, aSunday Times journalist, was killed by a similaranti-tank missile the next day.[7]
Later in the same conflict, Segal was shot in the leg when his team came under machine gun fire from theIsrael Defense Forces following a misidentification of the vehicle in which he was travelling in theGolan Heights.
Allan Segal's work won, amongst other accolades, twoBAFTAs (for the films "Nuts and Bolts of the Economy" and "Made in Korea"), theRoyal Television Society's Judges' Award for outstanding contribution to investigative journalism, theBroadcasting Press Guild's award for Best Documentary Series (for "Apartheid" in 1986), and aNew York Film Festival Blue Ribbon.[8]
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