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Dick Fontaine: Tempo & New Tempo

Presented by International House Philadelphia at The Ibrahim Theater at International House

November 18, 2011

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Minding the Gap: The Films of Dick Fontaine

The films of Dick Fontaine, a pioneer of cinema vérité in the UK, are an unrivaled document of the seismic shifts within Western culture during the second half of the 20th century. Starting in the early '60s, inspired by American jazz and the writings of Marshall McLuhan, Fontaine began forging a unique path for himself within the distinctively British tradition of documentary filmmaking. His work, past and present, speaks directly to the parallel trajectory of politics and culture, bridging the negligible distance between the two.

Program 2: Tempo & New Tempo

In 1966, Mike Hodges was made a producer for ABC-UK, he called on Fontaine to assist in filling the stations necessary quota of weekly arts programming. With a budget at their disposal and little interference from management, Fontaine and Hodges moved to Paris, creating intimate portraits of some of the most radical and innovative artists of the day. Produced for the program Tempo (later New Tempo), the films were a stylistic departure from Fontaine’s earlier work for Granada. McLuhan’s influence becoming increasingly more pronounced, the end results were often as challenging as the subjects themselves, including, among other works, some of the finest portraits of jazz musicians ever committed to film.

Who’s Crazy? (aka David, Charlie and Ornette)
dir. Dick Fontaine, UK, 1966, video, 30 mins

A meditation on freedom of expression with three avant-garde musicians under the leadership of composer and multiinstrumentalist Ornette Coleman. Capturing the trio over two days in Paris as they worked on scoring a Living Theater project titled Who’s Crazy, the film famously contains a complete, uninterrupted, performance of Sadness, one of Coleman’s most memorable and enduring compositions.

Who is Sonny Rollins?
dir. Dick Fontaine, UK, 1968, video, 30 mins

Portrait of the jazz great during his self-enforced exile from his audience as protest against the war in Vietnam. Filmed playing with students in Harlem, in the countryside, and on the Williamsburg Bridge to the accompaniment of passing subway trains, Rollins’ melodic sense throughout the film is as probing and soulful as ever.

Sound??
dir. Dick Fontaine, UK, 1967, video, 30 mins

Produced by Mike Hodges for New Tempo, Sound?? is a poetic journey from zoo to anechoic chamber in search of the limits of music with blind musician Rahsaan Roland Kirk and composer John Cage. An attempt to make films against conventional televisual rhetoric, New Tempo began as a series of arguments around a single concept (drugs, expendability, celebrity, etc.) between the filmmakers and sculptor Eduardo Paolozzi, architect Cedric Price and poet Al Alvarez. These discussions were later realized as films. Sound?? was the first of Fontaine’s two contributions to the series.