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Here's the rare lionizing-a-musician doc that strikes a smart balance between vintage footage, talking-head testimonials, and contemporary tribute performances. Despite the appearance of Peter Yarrow, Bob Weir, Ramblin' Jack Elliott, and Jorma Kaukonen of Jefferson Airplane and Hot Tuna, Harlem Street Singer keeps its emphasis on its subject's fingers, frets, soul, and story. Blind street singer Reverend Gary Davis's acoustic blues and gospel guitar heroics — especially his inimitable, percussive, self-taught technique — are illuminated by way of smart testimony, but the many clips of him in action are so marvelous that this would be a first-rate doc subject even without all these admiring white people turning up to toast him. Simeon ...

You may see directors Simeon Hutner and Trevor Laurence’s documentary Harlem Street Singer, and you may wonder: how many? How many unsung heroes of blues and rock n’roll, black musicians who played instruments like they were extensions of their limbs, who wrote and performed songs that set the standard for those who came after them, how many have been forgotten? How many, their songs living on only through the white rock musicians who covered, copied, and profited from their distinct styles, have lived and died without full acknowledgement of their contributions? In a way, the guitar player and singer Reverend Gary Davis (the subject and titular Harlem street singer) is...

Festival’s music documentaries include Revenge of the Mekons [pictured] and Harlem Street Singer.

The 27th Leeds International Film Festival (Nov 6-21) will open with Alfonso Cuaron’s Gravity.

The festival programme includes 163 films in 250 screenings at four main venues: Leeds Town Hall, Hyde Park Picture House, Vue Leeds at the Light and the Everyman.

The official selection includes festival hit such as Blue is the Warmest Colour, Child’s Pose, Nebraska and Stranger By The Lake; plus discovery titles including Harmony Lessons, The Strange Little Cat and the UK premiere of Finnish veteran Pirjo Honkasalo’s Concrete Night.

Leeds’ cult cinema section Fanomenon will include the UK premiere of Korea’s Cold Eyes, a Batman offering with a new documentary about Frank Miller, and the Night of the Dead and Day of the Dead series with films such as 100 Bloody Acres and Big Bad Wolves. Cult classics to screen include Deadlock, Wake in Fright, and Ikarie...

Sneak Peek a restricted 'red-band' trailer from "Inside Llewyn Davis", directed by Joel and Ethan Coen ("True Grit").

The new drama adapts "...the music, politics and spirit of a revolutionary period in American culture", based on the novel "The Mayor of MacDougal Street" by author Dave Van Ronk.

Cast includes Oscar Issac, Carey Mulligan, John Goodman, Justin Timberlake, Garret Hedlund  and F. Murray Abraham :

"...'Dave Van Ronk', one of the founding figures of the 1960's folk revival, was far more than that. A pioneer of modern acoustic blues, a songwriter, arranger and singer, he became one of the most influential guitarists of that era.

"'This is a first-hand account by a major player including encounters with Bob Dylan, Tom Paxton, Phil Ochs and Joni Mitchell, as well as older luminaries including Reverend Gary Davis, Mississippi John Hurt and Odetta..."

Click the images to enlarge and Sneak Peek...

Sneak Peek the first trailer for "Inside Llewyn Davis", directed by Joel and Ethan Coen ("True Grit").

The new drama adapts "...the music, politics and spirit of a revolutionary period in American culture", based on the novel "The Mayor of MacDougal Street" by author Dave Van Ronk.

Cast includes Oscar Issac, Carey Mulligan, John Goodman, Justin Timberlake, Garret Hedlund  and F. Murray Abraham :

"...'Dave Van Ronk', one of the founding figures of the 1960's folk revival, was far more than that. A pioneer of modern acoustic blues, a songwriter, arranger and singer, he became one of the most influential guitarists of that era.

"'This is a first-hand account by a major player including encounters with Bob Dylan, Tom Paxton, Phil Ochs and Joni Mitchell, as well as older luminaries including Reverend Gary Davis, Mississippi John Hurt and Odetta..."

Click the images to enlarge and Sneak Peek "Inside Llewyn Davis...

Facebook has come under fresh scrutiny from Irish regulators after announcing plans to alter its privacy policy. The social network recently unveiled proposals to scrap public voting on privacy matters, sparking an angry response from some users and rights groups. However, the Irish privacy watchdog's deputy commissioner Gary Davis has since said the organisation will be pressing Mark Zuckerberg's firm for clarification on what the new measures will entail. "We will be seeking urgent further clarification from Facebook Ireland and if we consider that the proposed changes require a specific consent from EU users we will require Facebook to do this," Bloomberg quotes (more)...

Musical adventurers reclaim important chapter of black Americana There’s a long tradition of African-Americans playing old-time music, from blues legends Blind Blake, the Reverend Gary Davis and Josh White to artists such as the Mississippi Mud Steppers and Howard “Louie Bluie” Armstrong, whose early ragtime outfit, the Tennessee Chocolate Drops, has provided a lasting influence—and this modern-day act with its name. The Carolina Chocolate Drops formed in 2005 at the Black Banjo Gathering in Boone, N.C., and since then the young trio has been determined to prove that “black folk were a huge part of the stringband tradition.”...

Hometown: Lee County, Iowa

Album: Animals in the Dark

For Fans Of: Tom Waits, Woody Guthrie, Reverend Gary Davis

William Elliott Whitmore needed a change of pace. After concluding his Southern Records trilogy, a series of albums steeped in country-folk and Delta blues variants, through which the musician and humble horse-farmer worked through his grief over the death of his parents, he retreated home to his cabin in Iowa to listen to the coyotes howl. He didn't know if he had anything left to say; his songwriting had been cathartic, but the despair he once felt was turning to disgust. With deep roots in the punk rock community, he'd spent years touring with bands whose audiences had few reference points for music caked in Mississippi River mud, and after signing to Anti- Records (home to musical outlaws like Merle Haggard and Tom Waits) he knew he wouldn’t make a punk rock album,...