Essential Fellini

Essential Fellini

2 Seasons

A century after his birth, Federico Fellini still stands apart as a giant of the cinema. The Italian maestro is defined by his dualities: the sacred and the profane, the masculine and the feminine, the provincial and the urbane. He began his career working in the slice-of-life poetry of neorealism, and though he soon spun off on his own freewheeling creative axis, he never lost that grounding, evoking his dreams, memories, and obsessions in increasingly grand productions teeming with carnivalesque imagery and flights of phantasmagoric surrealism while maintaining an earthy, embodied connection to humanity. Featuring a selection of beautifully restored classics, this tribute celebrates a titan who conjured a cinematic universe all his own: a vision of the world as a three-ring circus in which his innermost infatuations, fears, and fantasies take center stage.

Subscribe Share
Essential Fellini
  • Fellini on Fellini

    Episode 1

    In this program, director Federico Fellini discusses his life and career.

  • Fellini: A Director’s Notebook

    Episode 2

    Federico Fellini made this hour-long "documentary" for producer Peter Goldfarb and NBC in 1969. A meditation on his films-including those he had abandoned and those he had not yet made-it follows the path laid out by 8½ and leading to such later self-reflexive films as FELLINI'S ROMA and ORCHESTR...

  • Fellini on “Second Look,” Episode 1

    Episode 3

    In this first episode of a four-part interview Federico Fellini did on the Belgian television program “Second Look” in 1960, the director discusses his early life and his career as a cartoonist before he began working in cinema.

  • Fellini on “Second Look,” Episode 2

    Episode 4

    In this second episode of a four-part interview Federico Fellini did on the Belgian television program “Second Look” in 1960, the director discusses the sights of his hometown of Rimini—including the Grand Hotel, which features in I VITELLONI—as well as his early work with filmmaker Roberto Rosse...

  • Fellini on “Second Look,” Episode 3

    Episode 5

    In this third episode of “Second Look,” a four-part interview series Federico Fellini did on Belgian television in 1960, the director, actor Giulietta Masina, and screenwriter and filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini discuss LA STRADA and NIGHTS OF CABIRIA.

  • Fellini on “Second Look,” Episode 4

    Episode 6

    In this final episode of “Second Look,” a four-part interview series Federico Fellini did on Belgian television in 1960, the director discusses LA DOLCE VITA and the scandal surrounding its release. Also interviewed, among others, are actors Yvonne Furneaux and Marcello Mastroianni, author Albert...

  • Fellini: I’m a Born Liar

    Episode 7

    This feature-length 2002 documentary by Damian Pettigrew’s tracks the life and career of director Federico Fellini through his often contradictory statements. As Fellini said in the quote that gives the documentary its title: “I’m a born liar. For me, the things that are the most real are the one...

  • Federico Fellini’s Autobiography

    Episode 8

    For this 2000 documentary, Paquito Del Bosco was given total access to the RAI (Italian television) archives’ holdings of interviews with Federico Fellini. Italian film critic Tullio Kezich writes, “The project is a precious contribution to our understanding of the director and his genius.”

  • At Home with Federico Fellini

    Episode 9

    In this 1987 interview for Italian television, director Federico Fellini discusses the importance of Franz Kafka’s novel “Amerika” to the making of INTERVISTA.

  • Gideon Bachmann Interviews with Federico Fellini

    Episode 10

    Critic Gideon Bachmann was a friend and intellectual sparring partner of Federico Fellini’s for over thirty years. As a radio broadcaster and then a filmmaker, he interviewed Fellini and many of those who knew him at length. What resulted is an oral biography of the great director.

  • Gideon Bachmann and Fellini’s Friends and Family

    Episode 11

    Critic Gideon Bachmann was a friend and intellectual sparring partner of Federico Fellini’s for over thirty years. As a radio broadcaster and then a filmmaker, he interviewed Fellini and many of those who knew him at length. What resulted is an oral biography of the great director.

  • Reporter's Diary: “Zoom on Fellini”

    Episode 12

    This television program shows director Federico Fellini at work on JULIET OF THE SPIRITS in 1964.