Very interesting article about the origins of La Dolce Vita by Tom Kington of the Guardian:

Federico Fellini's classic depiction of decadent American starlets and photographers changed cinema forever. Now the journalist who chronicled 1950s life on Rome's glitzy Via Veneto and briefed Fellini for his film has decided to give his own definitive account of the era. As far as Ciuffa, now 77, is concerned, 50 years later he is setting the record straight, by writing La Dolce Vita, Minute by Minute. "The real Dolce Vita started in Rome years before the cafes opened on Via Veneto and had as much to do with mysterious deaths, drug abuse and debauched Roman aristocrats as with Hollywood," he said. While photographers such as Tazio Secchiaroli have long been seen as inspirations for Paparazzo, the character in La Dolce Vita who gave celebrity-chasing photographers their name, Ciuffa claims he provided source material for the cynical columnist-about-town, played to laconic perfection by Marcello Mastroianni.

Read it all.

The AP is reporting on the death of Felice Quinto "Celebrity photographer Felice Quinto dies at 80" who Fellini based his infamous character from La Dolce Vita, Paparazzo, on:

ROCKVILLE, Md. -- Felice Quinto, a renowned celebrity photographer and the likely model for the character Paparazzo in Federico Fellini's 1960 film "La Dolce Vita," has died. He was 80.

Quinto died of pneumonia on Jan. 16 in Rockville, his wife, Geraldine Quinto, said Monday.

Quinto often was referred to as the "king of the paparazzi" -- a term derived from the character in "La Dolce Vita" -- and he pioneered some of the aggressive tactics that celebrity photographers use to this day.

He would hide in bushes, wear disguises and zip around Rome on a motorcycle, taking photos that appeared in gossip publications around the world.

Quinto was born in Milan in 1929 and befriended Fellini while living in Rome in the 1950s. According to his wife, Fellini asked Quinto to play a photographer in "La Dolce Vita," but he declined because he was making more money taking pictures. He briefly appeared in the film as a bystander.

"By the time Fellini came out with his movie, it was already about four years that I had been doing photography," Quinto told the Dallas Morning News in 1985.

In 1960, Quinto snapped a picture of actress Anita Ekberg -- who appeared in "La Dolce Vita" as a starlet hounded by Paparazzo -- kissing a married movie producer at a cafe in Rome.

Quinto told ABC News in 1997 that Ekberg shot arrows at him as he stood outside her house at 5 a.m. One nicked Quinto's hand, and another struck a photographer's car.

Amarcord (1973) loosely translated mean "I remember" and is a coming of age comedy about life in a small seaside town during the Fascist period of the 1930s similar to the one where Fellini was born and raised.

Fellini's Roma (1972 ) is an episodic collection of Fellini's views and opinions of Rome. It blends visions that are somewhat autobiographical including scenes of Fellini's experience as a newcomer to the city with the present day city.

Fellini-Satyricon (1969) is loosely taken from a book written by Gaius Petronius from first century Rome about two student friends who argue over another boy. Only portions of the book have survived and the movie reflects this fragmented state.

Quite a messy story being reported in several outlets about Fellini's niece and his foundation:

Federico Fellini, revered in Italy as a cine matic great and cited abroad as a key influence on Martin Scorsese and Woody Allen, is at the centre of a row in his home town of Rimini.

Celebrations of the 90th anniversary of the director's birth have been marred by a battle over his legacy between his niece and the foundation set up in his name to promote such classics as La Dolce Vita.

Francesca Fabbri Fellini, the daughter of Fellini's sister, has stormed off the board of the foundation, claiming that she was frozen out and has taken with her Fellini's personal library and his collection of Oscars.

A tale of money, blood ties and show business, the battle of Rimini has upstaged the opening in Italy of Nine, the musical film starring Daniel Day-Lewis and Nicole Kidman inspired by Fellini's 1963 masterpiece 8½.

Despite rumours in Rimini that she craved the limelight at the foundation, Fabbri Fellini said the truth was she has been snubbed. "When the Fellini Prize was awarded to Sidney Lumet in November, no one bothered to introduce me to the American director," she told the Italian newspaper Il Resto Del Carlino. "I had to chase him down the corridor of the Grand Hotel in Rimini at the end of the evening to meet him."

Here are a couple of interesting blog posts from around the web about Fellini films - "Fellini's Faces" and "Wine in Fellini's La Dolce Vita" - both worth a read.

It is great to see people both viewing and thinking about and discussing these films in 2010.

Here is a photo feature from Style.com on "Fellini's Women".

You learn something new every day. I just came across Italian artist/illustrator Milo Manara from a blog post, specifically one highlighting some of his renditions of Fellini's films:

In 1966, after a terrifying nightmare, the Italian maestro decided to abandon the making of a film called The Journey of G. Mastorna. Years later, the script was published in Italian newspapers with some illustrations by none other than Milo Manara, whose "Untitled" was a tribute to Fellini and which uncle Federico had liked. The subsequent collaboration on "Trip To Tulum" is a gorgeous blending of Fellini's dream vision and some of the finest illustrations ever put to paper by Manara (which means finest illustrations by anyone ever).

Manara's official site.

Variety has a report of the newly announced theme park to be developed in Rome by Cinecitta Entertainment. I get this thinking to a point:

Alemanno said... "Theme parks are a global phenomenon that prompts hundreds of thousands of people to travel; but Italy, and Rome in particular, has been terribly behind in this sector,"

But Rome is... Rome. Does it really need a theme park?

Anyway, there is more in the article, including the specific mention of a Fellini ride.

Here are more details about the exhibition at the Jeu de Paume from Bloomberg via the Washington Post:

PARIS -- Federico Fellini, once viewed by some as a mere farceur, has become a classic. The Jeu de Paume is honoring the Italian film director with a vast exhibition, aptly named "La Grande Parade."

Processions, masquerades and clowns are leitmotifs in his movies. At age 7, Fellini ran away from boarding school to follow a traveling circus. Although the adventure soon came to an end, the circus remained a lifelong obsession.

The show at the exhibition space in the Tuileries Gardens doesn't attempt to trace Fellini's life chronologically. That's a wise decision, given his tendency to constantly re-imagine his past. Instead, the exhibits -- photographs, posters, magazines, movie clips and Fellini's own drawings -- are grouped around themes.

An exhibit (I am assuming of photos and film stills) of Fellini's work at the Jeu de Paume museum in Paris is running now until January 17, 2010:

To attempt to put on a Fellini exhibition means to go back to the sources of Fellini's art and studying and revealing its processes of transformation, alteration, borrowing and accumulation. The result is a set of strata combining filmic elements, photographic documents, magazine presentations of the event, TV images and works by artists. This exhibition is resolutely multidisciplinary. It sets out to offer a new grid for reading Fellini's films.

The event and the historical fact, History and anecdote, biography and fiction are the materials that, by means of confrontations, echoes and dialogues, Fellini used to built his distinctive narratives and original visual environments.

Showing the creative context of Fellini's work in an exhibition means showing the nature of his creative mechanisms.

While many now legendary scenes have come to be seen as perfect incarnations of Fellini's prolific imagination, it now looks as if a more thorough analysis of the context will offer a fresh point of view on his work. Such a hypothesis sits well with Fellini's own inclinations. Trained as a caricature artist in his youth, for a while he earned a living by doing portraits of GIs on leave, and all through his life he would show the same visual acuity, the same ability to gather so much more than images in his freeze-frames of reality.

The exhibition at the Jeu de Paume affords a glimpse of Fellini's creative mechanisms by showing his unique ability for absorbing the real.
It comprises mainly photographs and drawings by Fellini, original film posters, period magazines and excerpts from his film.

Here is part one of the documentary film "Fellini dice..." - more to come:

Spirits of the Dead (1967) allows three famous directors including Fellini to each give their vision to an Edgar Allen Poe short story. "Toby Dammit" is an alcoholic English actor in Rome who is more interested in what will be given to him by the producers than filming the Italian western for which he was hired.

Juliet of the Spirits (1965) analyzes the identity crises of a middle aged Italian housewife who has over bearing women in her family and a cheating husband. She has visions and sees spirits that encourage her to change her life.