Fellini, Italy, Cinema: International Conference on the Centenary of Federico Fellini’s Birth (1920-2020)
Since his passing in 1993, the international scholarly community has continued to pay tribute to Federico Fellini, tackling virtually every aspect of the legendary Italian director’s work, from his early days as a screenwriter to his mature films, from the notebooks in which he collected his dreams to the fragments of his incomplete pictures. Time, attention, and countless pages have also been devoted to the work of Fellini’s collaborators, from his wife Giulietta Masina, who starred in many of his films, to Nino Rota, the legendary composer whose scores accompanied so many of Fellini’s iconic images. The persistence of his influence on today’s filmmakers, and we would argue on the culture at large, is evidence of the fact that Fellini’s imagery has become a shared patrimony, a common currency that is exchanged with daily frequency in our media-saturated lives. Gelsomina’s tears, Marcello’s sunglasses, and Anita’s fountain bath have become global signifiers not only for Fellini and Italian cinema, but for Italy itself: they are as steadily lodged in the world’s collective unconscious as the Colosseum’s arches and Venice’s gondolas.
The conference is part of the international celebrations in honour of the Fellini centenary, but it is first and foremost a component of a larger scholarly and pedagogical project that will unfold in the course of 2020, and that is articulated as follows.
January-April 2020: Assistant Professor of Italian and Cinema Studies Alberto Zambenedetti will offer a graduate seminar at the University of Toronto titled “100 Years of Federico Fellini” (ITA1810), in cooperation with Dr. Marco Malvestio, Postdoctoral Fellow in Italian Studies, who will teach one the course’s modules. Students completing the course will have the opportunity to apply to a dedicated session at the Toronto conference by submitting their work to the conference organizers.
TBD: TIFF will screen a retrospective of Federico Fellini’s work originating from Cinecittà and Cineteca di Bologna; the Italian Cultural Institute in Toronto, in collaboration with the Municipality of Rimini and the Fondazione Federico Fellini will organize a major exhibition devoted to the director in Toronto.
September-December 2020: Professor Zambenedetti will offer a different iteration of the aforementioned graduate seminar at the University of Toronto, in cooperation with Arts and Science Postdoctoral Fellow Dr. Jessica L. Whitehead, who will teach a module of her design. Students completing the course will have the opportunity to attend the Toronto conference and to submit their work for publication in a dedicated section of the volume that will collect a selection of the papers presented at both sessions.
October 9-10, 16-17, 2020: Toronto session of international conference is held virtually.
January 20, 2021: Second session of international conference meets in Rome.
January-June 2021: Conference organizers will collect and edit a selection of papers presented at both sessions. The resulting bilingual proceedings will be published as part of the Goggio Chair series in Italian Studies.
FELLINI, ITALY, CINEMA 