Gareth Jones (director)

Gareth Jones is a British film and television director and screenwriter. He is the owner and joint CEO, with Fiona Howe, of the independent production company Scenario Films.

Early life and education

Gareth Jones was born in London, son of the BBC Foreign Correspondent Ivor Jones and Jane Ann Sterndale Bennett. He is the grandson of the actress Athene Seyler and great-great-grandson of the composer William Sterndale Bennett.
He was educated at Westminster School and St John's College, Cambridge where he read modern languages. After graduation in 1973, he trained for a year at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama.
In 2011 he was awarded his PhD from Cambridge University for his thesis Rites of Recuperation: Film and the Holocaust in Germany and the Balkans.

Career

1970s–1980s

Jones first joined Prospect Theatre Company, where he worked with Kenny McBain, directing Shakespeare, Brecht, Strindberg, and Chekhov.
He was director of productions at the bilingual Welsh/English touring company Theatr yr Ymylon. Between 1977 and 1980, he worked as a freelance theatre director for the Royal Court Theatre with Stuart Burge, and for Theatr Clwyd, where he directed his own plays My People and Solidarity During the 1980s he published two novels, Lord of Misrule and Noble Savage.
After training as a television director at HTV Wales, he joined Granada Television at the invitation of producer Bill Podmore. There, he directed Coronation Street and the comedy drama series Brass, starring Timothy West, Caroline Blakiston and Barbara Ewing, the second series of which he also produced.
From 1984 to 1987, he worked as a freelance writer/director for BBC television drama. He wrote the series Fighting Back, starring Hazel O'Connor, and the five-part drama Shalom Salaam, a Jewish-Muslim love story starring Mamta Kaash, Toby Rolt, Ayub Khan-Din and Charlotte Cornwell, which he also directed.
Jones' other television directing credits include The Trial of Klaus Barbie, which was based on court transcripts and screened shortly after the verdict of the Gestapo leader's trial; Watch with Mother and Seeing in the Dark for BBC Drama; and Seduction – Tell Me More for Channel 4, for which he also shot and co-wrote the three-part documentary Born of the One Father in 1980–81.

1990s–present

Jones has worked as a screenwriter in Europe, where his credits include television movies such as Forbidden Zone and Not Without You for German broadcaster ZDF, The Gift of Life for France 2, Joseph, Mary Magdalen, Thomas and Saul of Tarsus for Mediaset in Italy, and the award-winning feature film , starring Ulrich Tukur.
Since 2007, he has run the feature film development initiative Babylon. This aims to promote cultural diversity within the independent film sector in Europe, and to provide an international platform for emerging filmmakers.
Jones wrote and directed a trilogy of feature films known collectively as the D-Trilogy, Desire, Delight and Delirium. Delight was screened at the 35th Moscow International Film Festival and at the Wales One World Film Festival.

Filmography

Year	Title	Role	Channel/Distributor	Duration
1980	Crown Court	Writer	Granada Television	3 x 30 mins
1981	Coronation Street	Director	Granada Television	14 x 30 mins
1983	Brass	Director	Granada Television	13 x 25 mins
1984	Brass	Producer/Director	Granada Television	13 x 25 mins
1985	Albion Market	Director	Granada Television	2 x 30 mins
1985-6	Albion Market	Producer	Granada Television	70 x 30 mins
1986	Fighting Back	Writer	BBC Television	5 x 60 mins
1987	The Trial of Klaus Barbie	Director	BBC Television	1 x 90 mins
1988	Shalom Salaam	Writer/Director	BBC Television	5 x 60 mins
1988	Watch with Mother	Director	BBC Television	1 x 75 mins
1989	Seeing in the Dark	Director	BBC Television	1 x 75 mins
1990	Seduction: Tell Me More	Director	Channel 4	1 x 20 mins
1991	Born of the One Father	Director	Channel 4/TF1	3 x 50 mins
1994	Forbidden Zone	Co-Writer	ZDF/ARTE	1 x 90 mins
1995-6	Open Sundays	Co-Writer	RTL	13 x 50 mins
1999	The Gift of Life	Co-Writer	France 2	1 x 90 mins
1999	Joseph	Writer	Mediaset	1 x 90 mins
2000	St Paul	Writer	Mediaset	2 x 90 mins
2000	'	Writer	Mediaset	1 x 90 mins
2000	'	Writer	ARD/Theatrical	1 x 90 mins
2001	Thomas	Writer	Mediaset	1 x 90 mins
2001	Not Without You	Co-Writer	ZDF	1 x 90 mins
2009	Desire	Writer/Director	Scenario Films/Theatrical	1 x 90 mins
2013	Delight	Writer/Director	Scenario Films/Theatrical	1 x 100 mins
2016	Delirium	Writer/Director	Scenario Films/Theatrical	1 x 100 mins

Selected publications

Year	Title	Role	Publisher	Description
1980	Lord of Misrule	Author	Farrar, Straus & Giroux US/Gollancz/Penguin UK	Novel
1985	Noble Savage	Author	Weidenfeld & Nicolson/Sphere UK	Novel
2006	The Optimists	Author	Kinokultura, November 2006, ed Iordanova	Film Criticism/Academic
2006	Sarajevo – Trauma Revisited	Author	Beyond Camps and Forced Labour, ed Steinert and Weber-Newth	Film Criticism/Academic
2007	The Cinema of the Balkans	Author	Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, Vol 27, Issue 2	Film Criticism/Academic
2007	An Inner Exodus: The Many Diasporas of Balkan Cinema	Author	Cineaste, Vol XXXII, No 3	Film Criticism/Academic
2010	Future Imperfect; European Cinema in Motion: Migrant and Diasporic Film in Contemporary Europe ed. Berghahn and Sternberg	Author	Palgrave Macmillan, 2010	Film Criticism/Academic