Fontaine grew up in France's overseas département of La Réunion and her collages and disassemblies intermix intimate gestures with the political in a vision of colonial history, racism and fascism. Using techniques such as peeling, recollage, degradation, scraping, reprinting, refilming, toning, colouring, soaking and washing out, as well as ironic puns, Fontaine focuses on the surface or minimal unit of film - the photosensitive frame - to project the tremors of the unconscious and collective memory and to bring to the fore the ghosts of history.
This programme journeys through her career on film, from some of her earliest films - in which she investigates the physical characteristics of film - to her major works on 16 mm, in which the images "are reworked by peeling off or partially erasing the emulsion, which is then displaced and (or) reconstructed using adhesive tape, without resorting to an optical copier" (C. Fontaine).
A Color Movie, 1983, super 8 mm to digital, no sound, 4 min.
La fissure, 1984, 16 mm, no sound, 1 min.
Correspondance, 1984, 16 mm, no sound, 2 min.
Le déjeuner sur l'herbe (Pique-nique), 1986, super 8 mm to digital, no sound, 1 min.
Cruises, 1989, 16 mm, 7 min.
Japan Series, 1991, 16 mm, 6 min.
Sunday, 1993, 16 mm, 7 min.
La pêche miraculeuse, 1995, 16 mm, 10 min.
Safari Land, 1996, 16 mm, 10 min.
The Last Lost Shot, 1999, 16 mm, 7 min.
Cross Worlds, 2006, 16 mm, 15 min.
Copies from Light Cone.
