Federico Fellini

Federico Fellini is best known as a distinctive, intensely personal and creative filmmaker. In the early part of his career, his films contributed to the Italian Neo-Realist movement in cinema. Peter Bondenella writes, "Italian filmakers were trying to develop a cinematic language comparable to the new literary language contemporary writers aimed to create, a nonrhetorical, elemental means of expression permitting an essentially poetic treatment of important social and political issues." Fellini contributed to this movement but soon veered in his own direction. As he moved beyond Neo-Realism, his films compared to a series of short vignettes about life (often autobiographical in nature). These vignettes were composed with surreal and colorful images that suggests a dreamstate. Especially in 8½ and Amarcord but also in many of his other films, Fellini's camera seems to dance, the movement underscored by Fellini's long-time collaboration with composer Nino Rota. Fellini's style was so pervasive and influential that it inspired a new cinematic adjective, "felliniesque." Simply, Fellini is one of the undisputed masters of cinema. more...