Nothing is known, everything is imagined. The filmaking and literature of Federico Fellini
Institutional Communication Service
16 September 2020
Fellini and literature: a paradox? The director's sly ability to escape from the inquisitorial force of written words, his constant resistance to any intellectual explanation, is well known. The story of Fellini's relationship with cinema could be represented just as the progressive disengagement from written words in favor of an increasingly daring imaginative freedom.
Federico Fellini established himself in the movie industry as a talented screenwriter, but as a film director, starting from his movie 8 ½, he gradually gave up scripts to focus more on the improvisation of his favourite actors. A process that leads up to his last film, La voce della luna (The Voice of the Moon): throughout all the filming, in fact, actors Roberto Benigni and Paolo Villaggio were given from Fellini only small leaflets with short "instructions". And yet, in this growing abandonment to his own fantasy, Fellini has only remained faithful to the most intimate aspiration of literature, that of approaching the mystery and the mercurial essence of existence, summed up by that phrase of his beloved Leopardi - apocryphal yet so true - which echoes in La voce della luna "Nulla si sa sa, tutto si immagina" (Nothing is known, everything is imagined).
Saturday, September 26th, starting at 9.30 am in the Boschetto Parco Ciani in Lugano, the full-day event devoted to Fellini will be held and realised through the collaboration between the USI Institute of Italian Studies and the Events and Congresses Division of the City of Lugano, proposing a courageous exploration of the literary background of Fellini's filmaking. In the morning session, Corrado Bologna, Valeria Galbiati, Giacomo Jori and Marco Maggi will evoke the most significant reflections; in the afternoon Maria Cristina Lasagni and Stefano Prandi will engage with Ermanno Cavazzoni, whose Poema dei lunatici deeply inspired Fellini for La voce della luna.
Full details attached (in Italian).
Information: [email protected]
