8 1/2

Repertory

Selected by Mitchell Kaplan

Marcello Mastroianni plays Guido Anselmi, a director whose new project is collapsing around him, along with his life. One of the greatest films about film ever made, Federico Fellini’s 8½ (Otto e mezzo) turns one man’s artistic crisis into a grand epic of the cinema. An early working title for 8½ was The Beautiful Confusion, and Fellini’s masterpiece is exactly that: a shimmering dream, a circus, and a magic act. Also featured is Fellini’s rarely seen first film for television, Fellini: A Director’s Notebook (1969). Produced by Peter Goldfarb, this “imagined documentary” of Fellini on Fellini is a kaleidoscope of unfinished projects, all of which provide a fascinating and candid window into the director’s unique creative process.