Fellini: The Journey Continues
4 Tuesdays, January 28 to February 18, 6:30 pm to 10:00 pm
Instructor: Maurizio Giammarco, Ph.D., Temple University
A ringmaster whose circus was the human comedy, Federico Fellini combined surrealism with social criticism to explore such themes as redemption, decadence, and the interplay between life and art. This course explores the maestro’s most audacious period, as he experimented with narrative form and visual style to express his deepest memories, fantasies, and anxieties.
8 ½ (1963) traces a director whose new project—and personal life—is collapsing around him. Originally titled The Beautiful Confusion, Fellini’s masterpiece is just that: a sparkling dream, a circus, and a magic act. Juliet of the Spirits (1965) examines the director’s central preoccupations—sex and love, life and death, fantasy and reality—from a female perspective, following a woman whose hold on reality begins to slip when she learns of her husband’s affair. The WWI-era fable And the Ship Sails On (1983) chronicles a group of aristocrats who board an ocean liner to scatter the ashes of an opera diva, only to sail inadvertently into the currents of history. Fellini earned his fourth Oscar with Amarcord (1973), a remembrance of his hometown of Rimini, evoking a vanished world while satirizing a country and its institutions stultified by fascism.
Join us, then, as we explore the rich frescoes, indelible characters, and absorbing narratives in these films made significant by the imagination of a cinematic maestro.
$100 for members, $140 for non-members
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