Elisabetta povoledo
09/01/2021 14:00
Clarín.com
The New York Times International Weekly
Updated 09/01/2021 2:05 PM
RIMINI (Italy) -
Federico Fellini
is one of a select group of film directors who have obtained an adjective sanctioned by the Oxford English Dictionary: "
Felliniesque
", which is defined as "
fantastic, bizarre; lavish, extravagant".
That description could easily be applied to the Fellini Museum, which opened in the Italian coastal city of Rimini - the director's birthplace - earlier this month:
a multimedia project that introduces visitors to Fellini's idiosyncratic cinematographic universe.
Costumes from the liturgical parade from Fellini's 1972 film "Roma", exhibited in the museum.
Photo Lorenzo Burlando, via Comune di Rimini.
The museum is both
fantastic
(the pages of the so-called "Book of Dreams", Fellini's drawings and reflections on his nocturnal dreams, appear on a wall when visitors blow on a pen);
lavish
as it includes extravagant costumes from the liturgical fashion show from his 1972 film "Rome");
and
strange
(what to think of a gigantic plush sculpture of actress Anita Ekberg, in which visitors can recline to watch scenes from "La Dolce Vita"?)
"We wanted a museum that went beyond the primary resources displayed in showcases, and that allowed the visitor to become an engaged viewer," said Marco Bertozzi, a film professor at the Iuav University of Venice, who curated the museum with the historian of the Anna Villari art.
The museum occupies two historic buildings, with a large square in between, in fact reconfiguring an important part of the center of Rimini.
Visitors can recline on a gigantic plush sculpture of actress Anita Ekberg to view scenes from the film.
Photo Lorenzo Burlando, via Comune di Rimini.
"It is an operation that has changed the face of the city," said Marco Leonetti, one of the municipal officials who supervised the project.
Alongside the museum headquarters, the same square includes a
theater bombed
and destroyed in World War II, now meticulously rebuilt and reopened in 2018, as well as a renovated medieval building that was turned into a contemporary art museum, opened a year ago. anus.
"We are slowly rebuilding the
memory
of our city," said Francesca Minak, an archaeologist and tourism official for the city.
Rimini administrators hope the museum will appeal to both longtime Fellini fans and those too young to see his films in theaters.
They hope that the latter group will be entertained by interactive displays and installations (now in automatic mode due to the pandemic) that offer a glimpse into Fellini's rich imagination.
A scene from "La Dolce Vita" is projected at Castel Sismondo, one of the museum's headquarters.
Photo Lorenzo Burlando, via Comune di Rimini.
"The museum works as a kind of time machine," says Leonardo Sangiorgi, one of the founders of the Milanese art collective
Studio Azzurro,
which has created the museum's multimedia screens, allowing viewers to savor the details and nuances of the films of Fellini.
At
Castel Sismondo
, a Renaissance-era castle that is one of the museum's buildings, the installations showing the people the director worked with and the locations he captured on celluloid immerse visitors in the land of Fellini.
One of the first rooms is dedicated to Fellini's wife,
Giulietta Masina,
who starred in "
La Strada"
(1956) and "
The nights of Cabiria"
(1957), films that consecutively won the Oscar for best foreign language film. and they brought Fellini to international fame.
Fellini won two other Oscars in that category, for "8 1/2" (1963) and "Amarcord" (1974), and Masina is the only person Fellini thanked by name in his acceptance speech for the 1993 Oscar to receive an honorary award "in recognition of his place as one of the masters of on-screen storytelling."
Fellini died seven months later, on October 31.
There are interactive panels, some memorabilia, such as sheet music pages from Fellini's collaborator,
Nino Rota
, and a reconstruction of the director's library (with books by Georges Simenon and Kafka, but also Collodi's "Pinocchio").
There are a lot of photos and
many clips of his films
, obtained after long negotiations with the copyright owners.
If you have patience and time, it takes about
six hours
to see them all, says Bertozzi.
The second seat is in an 18th century palace whose ground floor is occupied by the
Fulgor Cinema
, where Fellini discovered cinema in his youth, according to Leonetti, and which was later immortalized in "Amarcord", Fellini's montage of the Rimini from the fascist era.
In an interview in the documentary
"Fellini: I'm a Born Liar"
, the director said that the Rimini that he had "completely rebuilt" in "Amarcord" "belongs more to my life than the other Rimini, topographically exact".
The Fulgor was restructured by production designer Dante Ferretti, who worked with Fellini on five films, and reopened in 2018 as a working movie theater.
An exhibition area on the upper floors is expected to open in October.
Claims for a museum for Fellini began in Rimini shortly after the filmmaker's death.
The city gave its name to an important coastal park, a plaza and an elementary school, and several streets are now named after his films.
But even so, there was still the feeling that Fellini had been
ignored
in his country.
The Fellini Museum project gained momentum at the beginning of 2018, when the Italian Ministry of Culture allocated 12 million euros, or about 14 million dollars, for its creation.
It was initially scheduled to open in 2020, coinciding with the centenary of its birth, but the coronavirus ruined the calendar.
Fellini was no stranger to controversy.
When "La Dolce Vita" hit the screens in 1960, it sparked a national scandal, including a parliamentary debate and scathing reaction from the official Vatican newspaper,
L'Osservatore Romano
, calling it "disgusting."
The time has changed.
This month, L'Osservatore Romano has published a glowing review of the museum.
The redesign of Piazza Malatesta to accompany the museum's opening sparked similar disdain from heritage protection groups.
"They have transformed the square into something designed to attract tourists, without thinking about the residents of the city," said Guido Bartolucci, president of the local branch of conservation group Italia Nostra.
The plaza now includes a large circular bench, evoking the circle of the actors in the final scene of "8 1/2", with revolving stools in the center for the children to spin.
There is also a life-size statue of the rhinoceros from "And the ship goes on sailing" (1983);
municipal authorities have had to put a "No riding" sign next to it, to prevent people from getting on it.
But the item that has most irritated some locals is a huge fountain that sprays mist every half hour, evoking the Rimini mist that appears in some Fellini films.
Bartolucci said the source violates Italy's strict heritage laws, because it invades the historical remains of Rimini's subsoil.
Authorities could have rebuilt another part of the city, he said, adding that the decision to transform the square was made with little public debate.
Italia Nostra
has proposed turning Castel Sismondo into a museum displaying Rimini's hidden history, from its Roman past to its Renaissance heyday, in a way that fosters a "sense of community" for residents, Bartolucci said.
"Instead, the Fellini Museum has canceled the name of the castle," he said.
Leonetti, the municipal official, said that "putting armor in the rooms is not the only way to make a castle come alive," adding that the new square had supplanted a parking lot and a menial market.
In the few weeks since it was opened to the public, "it has become a meeting
place,
" he said.
On a hot morning last week, several children splashed happily in the fountain, while their parents watched.
"If the kids like it, then we got it right," Leonetti said.
c.2021 The New York Times Company
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