American Gypsy

When the police burst into the house of Grover Marks, inhabitant of the American city of Spokane, on 10 June 1986, they found more than one million dollars in cash and a large quantity of precious golden jewellery. Grover was furious, his reputation was tarnished, and the police action was incited by xenophobia and racism. For his son Jimmy, this event was the immediate cause to go and actively devote himself to the civil rights of the Roma in the United States. However, according to the police Marks was a gypsy king supervising a criminal organisation. American Gypsy: A Stranger in Everybody's Land unravels the history and culture of the Roma and the prejudices about their way of life that have arisen over the centuries. The film takes us from the car trade to Las Vegas, and via Internet marriages and ancient India back to the Marks family in Spokane. Jasmine Dellal (1970) studied French and Spanish literature and linguistics in Oxford and journalism in Berkeley. Here, she also made her first short documentaries. For her first long documentary American Gypsy, she took on the production, direction, script and editing, and even before the film was completed the working copy won a prize at the Atlanta Film & Video Festival. (International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam)