Dave Davidson

In 2010, independent filmmaker and media educator Dave Davidson, completed his latest documentary A Place Out of Time—The Bordentown School the story of the elite all-black school that flourished  for 70 years during the “Jim Crow”  era and was abruptly closed  in 1955—a victim of the rush to integration. The film had its national prime time broadcast premiere on PBS in May 2010. The New York Times says of the film, “You could listen to a lot of dry lectures by a lot of windy history professors and still not learn as much about race issues in the century after the Civil War as you do in A Place Out of Time ….But by the time the story is told, you have come to see the school as a microcosm of all the good intentions, misguided theories and veiled prejudice that have made equality so elusive for so long”.  A Place Out of Time was the only PBS-broadcast film to win a 2011 Christopher Award.

Davidson is currently Co-Producer and Director of Photography on Season Two of, Michael Feinstein’s American Songbook, the award-winning  documentary series for PBS, Produced and Directed by Amber Edwards.  He now in production directing  HANS RICHTER: Everything Turns – Everything Revolves, a documentary portrait of the Dadaist and  pioneering filmmaker. The film will premiere in 2013.

Davidson has received The American Film Institute Independent Filmmaker Grant, an Emmy Award, the National Endowment for the Arts Mid-Atlantic Artist Fellowship, and the Outstanding Artist Award from The New Jersey State Council on the Arts. Davidson founded Hudson West Productions in 1985 and currently serves as President. For Hudson West, Davidson has directed numerous award-winning films, including the nationally broadcast PBS documentaries Cissy Houston—Sweet Inspiration (“An exquisite documentary…This is the story of a woman who has thought deeply about the roots of black music.” - The Boston Globe) and The Dancing Man—Peg Leg Bates (”...provides a captivating portrait of Bates, but it does something more. It offers encouragement and salutes determination. The life of Peg leg Bates is an inspiration during Black History Month or any time at all  -The Kansas City Star).

Davidson is Professor of Film at The City College of New York (City University of New York) in Harlem, where he is the Founding Director of the MFA in Media Arts Production program—the only MFA production program in the largest media market in the world offered at an affordable / accessible public institution. In its first decade students from the program have achieved world wide recognition including winning 3 Student Academy Awards and 4 Student Emmys.