This
is
the
year
that Dick Fontaine finally
makes his long-awaited second film with Sonny Rollins while audiences
in two of
the world’s major capital cities reminisce on and celebrate his past
achievements.
The
Anthology Film Archives
will host Minding the Gap: The
Films of Dick Fontaine
from 17 to 24 February in New York’s trendy and arty Greenwich Village.
Anthology’s ten programme retrospective includes DF’s first ever
political
films for Granada Television, some of DF’s jazz films and the film that
introduced Hip Hop to the UK, the infamous Beat
This: A Hip Hop History. DF will make a personal appearance on
Friday 18
February in An Evening With Dick
Fontaine.
Archivist
and
film
buff,
Michael Chaiken,
whose efforts have brought about Minding
the Gap, is delighted that his long-term project is coming to
fruition.
“I
am
a
very
big admirer of the work of Dick
Fontaine, a neglected hero who’s been “minding the gap” in a
provocative
fashion between the two cultures of the UK and the US, and between form
and
content.In the Sixties, DF
captured The Beatles before Beatlemania, the creation of the fantasy of
Swinging London and the birth of the Sun newspaper. I’m very excited
about this
retrospective.”
New
York University is commemorating the
great African-American author James Baldwin this year in the conference
“James
Baldwin’s Global Imagination”. Having made a seminal film about his
friend JB (I Heard It Through the Grapevine), DF
has been approached to screen, introduce and discuss the film at NYU on
Saturday 19 February. Grapevine is a
poetic journey featuring James and his brother David as they look back
at the
civil rights movement and what remains of it.
In
London,
the
BFI,
also
gearing
up for a retrospective
of DF’s works, will appetise UK audiences with two of DF’s political
films – Death of a Revolutionary and I
Heard it Through the Grapevine. The
former will be shown on Saturday 5 February and Grapevine
will be shown on Saturday 19 March.
As
if
that’s
not
enough excitement for one
month, February is also the month DF tutors at the Berlinale Talent
Campus
(12-17 February) and struts his stuff at his NFTS students’ graduation
screenings, also at the BFI. This year’s grad event takes place on
Wednesday 23
February and will again welcome the industry’s great and good to some
of the
best ever work produced by NFTS documentary students.
Sonny
Rollins:
Who
I
Am,
What I Do
is due for
completion at the end of May 2011 and will be screened by BBC Arena on
the
niche arts channel BBC4.
That was the
year that was
2010
was
another
full
on year. Apart from
driving students crazy at the NFTS, DF also Exec-produced Diaspora
Calling, shot and directed by George Amponsah, produced and
presented by
Gugulethu Mseleku and edited by Jane Hodge. Produced, shot and edited
in six
weeks for two 30 minute slots for international transmission, Diaspora Calling followed Gugulethu on a
journey through the African Diaspora in Europe to discover what
Africans felt
about the World Cup 2010, which was held in an African country for the
first
time in history.
DF
also
Exec-produced
Rolling Steel, a ten-minute short
written and directed by Kyle
Simpson and produced by Gugulethu Mseleku for the Screen West Midlands
digi-shorts programme. Kyle wanted to make a film that told the story
of a gun
from dealer to the death of a young black man. He based Rolling
Steel on his discovery from Home Office records that large
numbers of handguns disappear mysteriously from police custody. The
film
explains how those guns might end up on the streets.
During
a
trip
to
New York in
September to shoot the 80th birthday concert of the
Saxophone
Collosus, Sonny Rollins, DF
received news that Handsworth
Calling, which he Exec-produced for Channel4 and SWM in
2009, had won the Social Responsibility Award at the Black
International Film
Festival.
Sonny’s
extraordinary
80th
birthday concert, held at the Beacon Theatre, featured Jim Hall,
Sonny’s old
partner on guitar, the legendary Roy Haynes on drums and the surprise
guest of
the night, the other saxophone giant, Ornette Coleman. DF said about
the event,
“This
was
magic
–
the first two people I made
jazz films with over 40 years ago, together for the first time on
stage, and
here I was filming it. A spectacular deja vu experience!”
This
concert
will
form
part of a major feature
length film with Sonny, provisionally titled Sonny
Rollins: Who I Am, What I Do, to be shown in the UK on BBC
Arena and yet to be decided venues elsewhere during 2011.