Dick Fontaine
Head of Documentary at the National Film & Television School.
biography
Dick Fontaine has made over forty films for television and the independent media. A founder member of World in Action, he was the first filmmaker to introduce the techniques of Direct Cinema to UK Television in the Sixties, collaborating with the Maysles Brothers to make groundbreaking films with the Beatles and Jean Shrimpton. He developed the essay film with Norman Mailer 'Will the real Norman Mailer Please Stand Up?', ' James Cameron Temporary Person Passing Through', 'James Baldwin I Heard it through the Grapevine' and others, and has also made award-winning experiments with the reflexive camera like, Double Pisces, Scorpio Rising. As well as collaborating on fiction projects with his partner, he has produced a wide range of music films with the likes of Kathleen Battle, John Cage, Sonny Rollins, Art Blakey, Johnny Rotten, Ornette Coleman and Afrika Bambaataa. Dick has taught at The School of Visual Arts and NYU in New York. He has had several retrospectives of his work especially with jazz and has given workshops, seminars and master classes in colleges across the UK and the USA. He joined the NFTS as a full time tutor in March 1995.