About Federico Fellini… and Tonino Guerra

Federico Fellini (1920 - 1993), perhaps one of the most important film directors in the history of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, was nominated for twelve Academy awards and won four times in the category of Best Foreign Language Film (for “La Strada” (1956), “Nights of Cabiria” (1957), “8 ½” (1963) and “Amarcord” (1974)), in addition to the 1992 Academy Honorary Award. In his collection are Lions and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Festival of Venice in addition to the 1960 Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film festival for “La Dolce Vita”. In 1990, the Japanese prince Hitachi handed him a Praemium Imperiale award for his contributions to the world of art. Fellini inspired fellow filmmakers Stanley Kubrick, Woody Allen, Martin Scorsese, Tim Burton, David Lynch, Marco Ferreri, Lina Wertmüller, Ettore Scola, Juan Antonio Bardem, Emir Kusturica, Wes Anderson and Terry Gilliam.  Having started his career as a caricaturist, Fellini conceived many of his films and characters while constantly drawing and following his fascination with dreams as well as the bizarre, grotesque, and enchanting.

Not unlike most screenwriters, Tonino Guerra (1920 - 2012) is less well-known. A poet who discovered his talent while trying to survive in a concentration camp in Germany, Tonino was drawn to film later in life. After leaving an elementary school teaching job for Rome, he  worked with nearly all the great names of Italian cinema, including Federico Fellini, Michelangelo Antonioni , Francesco Rosi, Vittorio De Sica, Paolo and Vittorio Taviani, Mario Monicelli and Giuseppe Tornatore, as well as foreign directors such as Germany’s Wim Wenders, Greece’s Theo Angelopoulos and Russia’s Andrei Tarkovsky. His poetry and sensibility is infused in the cult classic “Blow Up” and the unforgettable “Zabriskie Point”. His imagination co-created the Fellini favorite “Amarcord” among more than 120 other screenplays. At 70, Tonino Guerra left Rome and moved to the small town of Pennabilli in the Italian countryside where he become a multidisciplinary artist expressing his ideas in poetry as well as ceramics, painting, mosaics, and sculpture. He spent the last 20 years of his life defending and championing rural culture.

Fellini and Guerra worked together on three films : “And the Ship Sails On,” “Amarcord,” and “Ginger and Fred”.  They shared a profound friendship and spoke the same dialect which could be heard in the Oscar-winning film “Amarcord” (I remember). Guerra, who survived Fellini, dedicated several sculptures to his departed friend.