In Focus: Federico Fellini

January 29–April 1, 2020

Explore Federico Fellini’s work in depth with this lecture/screening series complementing our Fellini retrospective.

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  • Amarcord

  • Variety Lights

  • I vitelloni

  • La strada

  • 8 1/2

  • The Clowns

  • Upcoming
    Films
  • Upcoming
    Events
  • Selected
    Objects
  • Past
    Films
  • Past
    Events

Past Films

  • CANCELED: Amarcord

    • Wednesday, April 1 3:10 PM
    Federico Fellini
    Italy, 1973

    All film screenings and public programs at BAMPFA have been temporarily canceled. Learn more

    Digital Restoration

    Amarcord also screens Thursday, January 23, and Saturday, March 21 (without lecture).

    Fellini’s free-spirited portrait of Rimini in the 1930s, when fascism was a fact of life. “As full of tales as Scheherazade, some romantic, some slapstick, some elegiacal, some bawdy, some mysterious . . . a film of exhilarating beauty” (New York Times).

    Lecture by David Thomson

  • CANCELED: The Clowns

    • Wednesday, March 25 3:10 PM
    Federico Fellini
    Italy, 1970

    All film screenings and public programs at BAMPFA have been temporarily canceled. Learn more

    Digital Restoration

    The Clowns also screens Sunday, April 5 (without lecture).

    Fellini’s tribute to the world of the clown is—like so much of his supposedly nonfiction work—part documentary, part autobiography, and suffused with fantasy. “Fellini turns the world into his circus” (Time). 

    Lecture by Russell Merritt

  • CANCELED: 8 1/2

    • Wednesday, March 18 3:10 PM
    Federico Fellini
    Italy, 1963

    All film screenings and public programs at BAMPFA have been temporarily canceled. Learn more

    A jaded director (Marcello Mastroianni) fantasizes on his next great film—or his next sexual conquest—in Fellini’s metafictional masterpiece, “probably the most potent movie about filmmaking” (The Guardian). 

    Lecture by Russell Merritt

  • Guy Maddin on Federico Fellini

    • Wednesday, March 11 3:10 PM

    World Premiere!

    Canadian auteur Guy Maddin joins us via video conference to present the world premiere of The Rabbit Hunters, a new short commissioned by BAMPFA in honor of Federico Fellini’s centenary. Starring Isabella Rossellini, it’s equal parts Felliniesque and Maddinesque. Followed by Fellini: A Director’s Notebook.

    Guy Maddin Via Video Conference

  • A Fellini Omnibus

    • Wednesday, March 4 3:10 PM

    This program also screens Friday, April 3 (without lecture).

    Three Fellini shorts originally released as parts of omnibus films: The Marriage Agency (from the neorealist anthology Love in the City), The Temptations of Doctor Antonio (from the Decameron-inspired sex farce Boccaccio ’70), and Toby Dammit (from the Poe collection Spirits of the Dead). 

    Lecture by Russell Merritt

  • La strada

    • Wednesday, February 26 3:10 PM
    Federico Fellini
    Italy, 1954

    La strada also screens Saturday, February 1 (without lecture).

    Fellini’s muse, Giulietta Masina, modeled her timeless character Gelsomina after Charlie Chaplin’s Little Tramp. She stars with a brutish Anthony Quinn in this classic that Martin Scorsese has called “the cornerstone of Fellini’s work.”

    Lecture by Russell Merritt

  • I vitelloni

    • Wednesday, February 19 3:10 PM
    Federico Fellini
    Italy, 1953

    I vitelloni also screens Saturday, January 25 (without lecture).

    Fellini paired with the great Italian comic everyman Alberto Sordi for this look at the not-so-young sons of the middle class, (barely) growing up in the provincial town of Rimini. “One of the screen’s great portrayals of the hell-raising and malaise of young men” (Chicago Tribune). 

    Lecture by Russell Merritt

  • The White Sheik

    • Wednesday, February 12 3:10 PM
    Federico Fellini
    Italy, 1952

    Digital Restoration

    The White Sheik also screens Thursday, January 16 (without lecture).

    Provincial newlyweds arriving in Rome get sidetracked by the wife’s obsession with a fumetto photo-comic star in Fellini’s solo directorial debut. “A funny, sardonic, and clever satire on popular heroes and ordinary people’s illusions” (Chicago Reader). 

    Lecture by Russell Merritt

  • Variety Lights

    • Wednesday, February 5 3:10 PM
    Federico Fellini, Alberto Lattuada
    Italy, 1950

    Variety Lights also screens Sunday, January 19 (without lecture).

    Following a troupe of small-time vaudevillians led by an incorrigible dreamer (Peppino De Filippo) and his fiancée (Giulietta Masina), this was Fellini’s first look at the passions and dreams of eccentrics living beyond bourgeois society—but not his last. 

    Lecture by Russell Merritt

  • Open City

    • Wednesday, January 29 3:10 PM
    Roberto Rossellini
    Italy, 1945

    Digital Restoration

    Open City also screens Saturday, February 22 (without lecture).

    A group of women and children (led by a charismatic Anna Magnani) try to shelter resistance forces from the Nazis. Rossellini’s moving, inspiring, and agonizing neorealist classic was cowritten by Fellini.

    Lecture by Russell Merritt