Brigitte Fontaine

Brigitte Fontaine

Birth : 1939-06-24, Morlaix, Finistère, France

History

Brigitte Fontaine, (born 24 June 1939) is a singer of avant-garde music. She has employed numerous unusual musical styles, melding rock and roll, folk, jazz, electronica, spoken word poetry, and world. She has collaborated with Stereolab, Michel Colombier, Jean-Claude Vannier, Areski Belkacem, Gotan Project, Sonic Youth, Antoine Duhamel, Grace Jones, Noir Désir, Archie Shepp, Arno, and The Art Ensemble of Chicago. She is also a novelist, playwright, poet, and actress. The daughter of two teachers, Brigitte Fontaine developed her taste for writing and drama very early. She spent her childhood in small villages of Finistère, then in Morlaix. At 17 years old, she moved to Paris to become an actress. In 1971, she was one of the women who signed the Manifesto of the 343, publicly admitting to having an abortion at a time when it was illegal in France. In 1963, she turned to singing and appeared in several Parisian theatres, interpreting her own works. In 1964, she opened for Barbara and George Brassens's show at the Bobino. Even so, she did not give up theatre. With Jacques Higelin and actor Rufus, she created the play Maman j'ai peur ("Mom I am afraid"), which played first at the Vieille-Grille theatre, and then at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées. It met with such a critical and popular success that it stayed in Paris for more than two seasons and toured throughout Europe. In 1965 and then in 1968, she made two albums, one jazz and one avant-pop, as well as two 45s with Jacques Higelin. In 1969, she began what would be a long collaboration with Kabyle musician Areski Belkacem. With Belkacem and in the company of Higelin, she conceived Niok, an innovative spectacle of theatre and song, for the Lucernaire theatre. Soon after, Fontaine wrote a series of works in free verse and prose which comprised the show Comme à la radio at the Théâtre du Vieux-Colombier before being turned into an album of the same name. Recorded with the Art Ensemble of Chicago, this album marks a clean break with traditional French songs, building the first bridges to world music. Brigitte Fontaine became a major figure in the French underground. In a half-dozen albums, the majority of which were released through the independent label Saravah, Fontaine explored different poetic worlds. She renounced the use of rhyme, and using talk-over sometimes, she recorded, with very little means and often on two tracks, songs which addressed topics with humour or gravity, according to the mood, as various as death ("Dommage que tu sois mort"), life ("L’été, l’été"), alienation ("Comme à la radio"), madness ("Ragilia"), love ("Je t’aimerai"), social injustice ("C’est normal"), the inequality of the sexes ("Patriarcat") and racism ("Y' a du lard"). However, she also knew how to make light of herself ("L'Auberge (Révolution)"). ... Source: Article "Brigitte Fontaine" from Wikipedia in English, licensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0.

Profile

Brigitte Fontaine

Movies

Mords-les !
Director
Follow Brigitte Fontaine as she wanders in the streets of Morlaix.
Mords-les !
Diogénie
Follow Brigitte Fontaine as she wanders in the streets of Morlaix.
Oh Les Filles!
Self
What if French Rock were born with Edith Piaf? From sweet sixties pop to today's gender-indifferent anthems, from feminist rebels of the seventies to fashion icons of the social media age, from Françoise Hardy to Christine & The Queens, via Vanessa Paradis, Catherine Ringer, Charlotte Gainsbourg and many more, Oh Les Filles! tells the untold story of French female rock stars. Narrated by Clémence Poésy, this groundbreaking documentary combines interviews and iconic footage to radically reverse perspectives and give the patriarchy a kick!
The Big Night
Mother - Marie-Annick Bonzini
An ageing punk-with-a-dog and his brother the conformist decide to get their revenge on a shopping mall. Directing duo Benoit Delepine and Gustave Kervern, longstanding comic crusaders against capitalism, again set out to surprise and shock the bourgeois audience.
The Man Who Became A Camera: Photographer Takuma Nakahira
Music
With his photography and texts, Takuma Nakahira was a driving force behind Japan’s «political season» during the ‘60s and ‘70s, before suffering an artistic crisis that lead him into a medical emergency in 1977. Having lost a great part of his memory and his ability to speak, photographs became his life. Over a period of three years, the movie follows Nakahira on his daily quest to trace his life in photographs, whether in his Yokohama neighborhood or on a journey to Okinawa, a place visited in a long gone past.
Absolutely Fabulous
Brigitte Fontaine
The wildly popular British television show Absolutely Fabulous gets a Francophonic makeover with this film version directed by Gabriel Aghion. In this go around, Josiane Balasko and Nathalie Baye play the incorrigible Eddie and Patsy, who leave no impulse unenacted and no lust unsated -- be it for sex or the latest in designer clothing. Waking up from a night of drunken debauchery, the two dip right into a feast of champagne and caviar, much to the irritation of Eddie's elegant mother and her resentful daughter. As Eddie stretches an appalling pair of leopard-print leotards (complete with matching shoes, purse, and hat) over her massive rear end, she and Patsy learn of a handsome young Rollerblading delivery boy who quickly becomes the object of their lust. This film was screened at the 2001 Toronto Film Festival.
À mort la mort !
Viviane
The idea for this film about a generation and its lost ideals came to Romain Goupil after attending several funerals of friends in the fall of 1996, where the '68 generation, now in influential positions in media or politics, kept meeting each other. It seemed as if the revolution that they had tried to make was being buried with each coffin. A MORT LA MORT is in some ways an homage to this generation, now in their fifties. They were a privileged generation that thought that they could change the world, doing everything that their parents failed to do. There were no actual deaths in France as there were in Germany or Italy, but the system was not ideal for personal issues or for love. There was always a scapegoat for the injustices of the world, be it capitalism or imperialism. That way the blame could be placed somewhere else. Some of the '68 generation are still faithful to the principles of their youth and still continue to fight for the illusions of the past.