FRIDAY FEBRUARY 3- CINE/CLUB DOLBY SCREENING ROOM 100 Potrero

Frederico Fellini’s AMARCORD (1973, Italy)
This glorious film Fellini made about his childhood summons up atmospheres and images from the past. Amarcord recreates life in a small Italian town through the lives of a young boy. It’s magical.

Runtime: 2 hr. 5 min.

(Rotten Tomatoes)

WHY WE CHOSE THIS FILM:
As many of you know, we show a Fellini film nearly every year, and usually we run the gamut of his most famous masterpieces. This is our first time showing Amacord and it’s high time. A very popular work, it captures much of the awe and wonder of life in a small Italian town with all the colorful characters in place a boy might remember. It’s one of the least aggressively bizarre films he’s made, but its rich imagery, honestly shaped scenes and big splashes of film magic make it a milestone in the later films.

ABOUT THE DIRECTOR:
Along with Bergman, Frederico Fellini’s career defines serious 20th century film, though in quite contrasting ways. Fellini began his career as an artist, and during the early 40’s wrote a number of radio and film scripts while being an all around help with an actor friends traveling theater company. At the end of the war, they opened The Funny Face Shop, an arcade for GI’s which specialized in quick portraits, photos, voice recordings for the folks back home. One day a visit from director Roberto Rosselini brought Fellini his collaboration on a script for Open City, and he followed this with work onPaisan, both sterling film classics.

After a couple of unsuccessful stabs at film, Fellini directed Il Vitelloni (the Loafers) which brought him great success.He followed this with one thoughtful success after another including La Strada, Nights of Cabiria, and La Dolce Vita, all in a familiar post neo-realist style. Out of this work emerged a new style which announced itself with 8 1/2, films driven by theme rather than plot, films filled with atmosphere, color,memorable characters and rich fantasy. From these films, the adjective “Felliniesque” entered our vocabulary. Amacord is one of the first of this later style.

THERE IS NO ART SATURDAY THIS WEEK.