Dick Fontaine

Dick Fontaine is an English documentary filmmaker, currently (as of 2006^[update]) head of documentary direction at the National Film and Television School (UK).

Fontaine graduated with an MA in Moral Sciences from Cambridge University, and in 1962 he joined Granada Television as a researcher, going on to become one of the founders of Granada's World in Action series. He has made numerous films on African-American music and other closely related topics, including Beat This: A Hip-Hop History (1984) and Bombin' (1988). In all, he has made more than 40 documentaries. Among the wide range of subjects he has profiled in film are figures such as James Baldwin, Norman Mailer and Jean Shrimpton, as well as many musicians: Kathleen Battle, Betty Carter, John Cage, Johnny Rotten, Sonny Rollins, Ornette Coleman, Art Blakey and others.

By his wife, the African-American actress Pat Hartley (who appeared in several Andy Warhol films, as well as Rainbow Bridge and Absolute Beginners), Fontaine is the father of writer, music critic and editor Smokey Fontaine.