Dick Fontaine

A shy but ambitious film student falls into an intense, emotionally fraught relationship with a charismatic but untrustworthy older man.

One of the human trio is Dick Fontaine, the director, a thin, long-haired youth who has put together this highly personal exercise on something or other that runs, mercifully, for 58 minutes and comes from an English group of movie folk called the Tattooists. The second visitor to the animal abattoir is a pretty girl. The third is a porky, middle-aged man addicted to the expression, "Ya know?" The two men carry on a running argument about whether they should make a picture about pigs. "Are we making a movie, ya know?" says Fatso. "Where is it, ya know?" Then a bit later: "I'm making a movie about pigs, ya know?"

Renowned Black writer James Baldwin retraces his time in the South during the Civil Rights Movement, reflecting with his trademark brilliance and insight on the passage of more than two decades. From Selma and Birmingham and Atlanta; to the battleground beaches of St. Augustine, Florida, with Chinua Achebe; and back north for a visit to Newark with Amiri Baraka, Baldwin lays bare the fiction of progress in post–Civil Rights America, wondering “what happened to the children” and those 'who did not die, but whose lives were smashed on Freedom Road'.

The life of the world’s top model Jean Shrimpton and her svengali photographer David Bailey.

A portrait of jazz saxophonist Sonny Rollins during a period of self-exile, filmed practicing and reflecting on music, politics, and artistic independence across New York City.

First broadcast in 1987 on the UK's Channel 4, Bombin' is a documentary about Afrika Bambaataa's Zulu nation bringing American hip-hop culture to the UK for first time. The main focus is the graffiti art of Brim and the variety of reactions he is faced with from the British public and press.

Beat This: A Hip-Hop History is a 1984 BBC documentary film about hip-hop culture, directed by Dick Fontaine. The cast includes Afrika Bambaataa, DJ Kool Herc — the film includes footage from Herc's original dance parties — The Cold Crush Brothers, Jazzy Jay, Brim Fuentes, and The Dynamic Rockers. It is narrated by Imhotep Gary Byrd. Originally part of the Arena television series, it was among the first crop of documentaries about hip-hop.

Dick Fontaine documents Norman Mailer’s 1969 bid for the Mayor’s office in New York City. Accompanied by his running mate, Jimmy Breslin, Mailer charismatically works the press and the public with a provocative platform that ultimately fails.