| Gypsy Davy | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Produced by | Rachel Leah Jones Philippe Bellaiche |
| Starring | David Serva Jones |
| Narrated by | Rachel Leah Jones |
| Cinematography | Philippe Bellaiche Rachel Leah Jones |
Release dates |
|
Running time | 96 minutes |
| Country | Israel |
Gypsy Davy is a 2011 documentary film, directed by Rachel Leah Jones, and co-produced by Jones and Philippe Ballaiche.
The film is narrated by the director, Rachel Leah Jones, as a letter to her father. Her father is "David Serva," who was born David Jones, in Berkeley, California. Described as a "white-boy with Alabama roots", he went on to become a well known flamenco guitarist- the first American to have a successful career in flamenco in Spain. Jones' mother, Judith Jones, was a "Brooklyn-born Jewish girl" who became a flamenco dancer. The two started a family in Berkeley, California, in the early 1970s.
Serva quickly abandoned his wife and baby daughter, and during his life and career, he amassed a total of five wives, and had children with each of them. Through her own memories and those of his other children and wives, in Gypsy Davy Jones creates a personal and political portrait of a man, and examines the legacy of an artist and his family.
Gypsy Davy was in the making for about a decade. Over this time, producer-director Rachel Leah Jones filmed her father, who had left her in infancy. She also interviewed her own mother, and her half-siblings and their mothers, combining these interviews with archival footage and her own narration. [1]
The film was created with support of the Israeli New Fund for Cinema and Television. [2]
The US premiere of the Gypsy Davy was at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival. [3] The film had previously screened in Israel in 2011 at the Jerusalem Film Festival.
In his mostly-positive review, Screen Daily reviewer Tim Grierson writes that in spite of the main premise of a famous musician's infidelity being unsurprising, "director Rachel Leah Jones’s Gypsy Davy takes that truism and wrings something thought-provoking and melancholy from it." Though Grierson dislikes the narration, he praises the film's music and finds the family-member interviews to be the strongest point of the film. [4] In his Variety review, Dennis Harvey calls the film "as engrossing as a flavorsome, twisty literary novel", lauding both the "colorful characters" and the music. [5] Calling Gypsy Davy "an interesting story and great personal work", Jonas Weir, in Vox Magazine, sums the work up as "a portrait of a man who led an irresponsible life that hurt a lot of people and his daughter’s coming to terms with who he is. David Jones doesn’t seem like a completely rotten man, just a man who has done some completely rotten things." [6]
John DeFore, on the other hand, in the Hollywood Reporter, calls the film a "self-obsessed personal voyage" that is uninteresting to anyone not involved in the story. [7]
| Year | Award | Category | Result |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2011 | Cinema South Film Festival | Juliano Mer Khamis Documentary Award | Won |
| Documentary Edge Film Festival | Best Culture Vultures | Won | |
| 2012 | Doc NYC | Viewfinders Grand Jury Prize | Nominated |
| Sundance Film Festival | Jury Award: World Cinema - Documentary | Nominated | |
| International Women's Film Festival In Rehovot | Best Documentary | Won |
Kirby Bryan Dick is an American film director, producer, screenwriter, and editor best known for directing documentary films. He received Academy Award nominations for Best Documentary Feature for directing Twist of Faith (2005) and The Invisible War (2012). He has also received numerous awards from film festivals, including the Sundance Film Festival and Los Angeles Film Festival.
The Thessaloniki Documentary Festival is an international documentary festival held every March in Thessaloniki, Greece. TDF, founded in 1999, features competition sections and ranks among the world's leading documentary festivals. Since 2018, TDF is one of the 28 festivals included in the American Academy of Motion Picture, Arts and Sciences Documentary Feature Qualifying Festival List. TDF is organized by the Thessaloniki Film Festival cultural institution, which further organizes the annual Thessaloniki International Film Festival, held every November. French producer Elise Jalladeu is TDF's general director; film critic Orestes Andreadakis serves as its director.
500 Dunam on the Moon is a 2002 documentary film directed by Rachel Leah Jones about Ein Hod, a Palestinian village that was captured and depopulated by Israeli forces as part of the 1948 Palestinian expulsion and flight in the 1948 Arab–Israeli War.
Yair Qedar is an Israeli documentary filmmaker, social activist and former journalist. In his project "the Hebrews", he had been Chronicling the lives of Jewish and Israeli figures of the modern Hebrew literary canon, Qedar's 19 feature length documentaries have all premiered at film festivals and have won the director over 30 prizes. Also, Qedar is a leading LGBTQ activist. He created several Queer films and the first Israeli LGBTQ newspaper.
David Fisher is an Israeli documentary film director, producer and lecturer. In 1999–2008, he was Director General of The New Fund for Cinema and Television (NFCT).
Yoav Potash is a writer and filmmaker whose works include the documentaries Crime After Crime and Food Stamped.
Amy Ziering is an American film producer and director. Mostly known for her work in documentary films, she is a regular collaborator of director Kirby Dick; they co-directed 2002's Derrida and 2020's On the Record, with Ziering also producing several of Dick's films.
Guy Davidi is an Israeli documentary filmmaker. His movie 5 Broken Cameras was nominated for the 2013 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. Davidi also won the Best Directing Award along with Palestinian co-director Emad Burnat in the 2012 Sundance Film Festival and the 2013 international Emmy Award as well as numerous awards worldwide.
Lindsey Dryden is a British film director, producer and writer.
Leah Tsemel, or Lea Tsemel is an Israeli lawyer known for her work in support of Palestinian rights. She defines her career as one involving “everything [that occurs] between the Palestinians and the authorities". Her five decades of representing Palestinian defendants in the Israeli court system is the subject of the documentary film Advocate, which came out in 2019, and won the 2021 Emmy for Best Documentary.
Stevan Riley is a British film director, producer, editor and writer. He was educated at the University of Oxford, where he studied Modern History. His films include Blue Blood (2006); Fire in Babylon (2010); Everything or Nothing (2012); and Listen to Me Marlon (2015). Stevan went to school in Dover, Kent, Dover Grammar for Boys.
Ra'anan Alexandrowicz is a director, screenwriter and editor. He is known for the documentary The Law in These Parts (2011), for which he received the Grand Jury Award at the Sundance Film Festival, a Peabody award, and numerous other prizes. His earlier documentaries, The Inner Tour (2001) and Martin (1999), were shown in the Berlin Film Festival's Forum section and MoMA's New Directors / New Films series. Alexandrowicz's single fiction feature, James' Journey to Jerusalem (2003), premiered in Cannes Directors' Fortnight and at the Toronto International Film Festival and received several international awards. He also directed the 2019 documentary film The Viewing Booth. Alexandrowicz's films have been released theatrically in the United States and Europe, and broadcast by PBS, Arte, the BBC, as well as other television channels. He frequently served as the Sundance Documentary Fund's editing advisor.
The 2019 Sundance Film Festival took place from January 24 to February 3, 2019. The first lineup of competition films was announced on November 28, 2018.
In Her Footsteps is a 2017 documentary film by Israel-Arab director Rana Abu Fraihah, her first full-length work. The film was produced by Ibtisam Mara'ana.
Rachel Lears is an American independent documentary filmmaker. She is the director of Knock Down the House (2019), a documentary film about four women running for Congress in the 2018 midterms, including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. The film premiered at Sundance Film Festival in January 2019 and was sold to Netflix for $10 million, releasing on May 1, 2019. Her other documentaries include The Hand That Feeds (2014), about undocumented immigrant workers in a labor dispute with owners at a Manhattan bakery café, and To the End (2022), about climate change.
Ashkenaz is a 2007 Israeli documentary film, directed by Rachel Leah Jones.
Dimona Twist is a 2016 Israeli documentary film, directed by Michal Aviad.
Mike Wallace Is Here is a 2019 biographical documentary film directed by Avi Belkin. It was produced by Rafael Marmor, Peggy Drexler, John Battsek, Avi Belkin, and Chris Leggett, under the banner of Drexler Films, Delirio Films and Rock Paper Scissors Entertainment. The film follows the life and career of American journalist Mike Wallace, using never-before-seen archival footage of the journalist preparing for and speaking about his work.
Rachel Leah Jones is an American-Israeli documentary film director and producer. Her documentary film Advocate about the controversial human rights lawyer Leah Tsemel, which she co-directed and co-produced with cinematographer Philippe Bellaïche, premiered at 2019 Sundance Film Festival, and won top prizes at Kraków Film Festival, Thessaloniki Documentary Festival and Docaviv Festival.
Advocate is a 2019 Israeli documentary film, directed by Rachel Leah Jones and Philippe Bellaïche. The film premiered at the 2019 Sundance Festival, and went on to win top prizes at Thessaloniki Documentary Festival, Kraków Film Festival, Hong Kong International Film Festival and Docaviv Festival. Advocate won the Emmy for Best Documentary in the 42nd News and Documentary Emmy Awards.
