January 16–May 21, 2020. BAMPFA, 2155 Center Street, Berkeley CA. Federico Fellini (1920–1993) was a masterful artist of memory, dreams, fantasy, and desire. A central figure in the international art cinema movement that took off in the mid-1950s, he earned some of film’s highest honors, winning Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film for La strada, Nights of Cabiria, 8 1/2, and Amarcord, and the Palme d’Or at Cannes for La dolce vita.

A hundred years after his birth, Fellini’s films still enthrall with their baroque flamboyance, emotional resonance, and grand visual design. The young Fellini was far more interested in drawing, puppetry, the circus, and the movies than in academic pursuits. After an early job as a caricature artist and writer for a humor magazine, by the mid-1940s he was writing screenplays and working as an assistant director with Roberto Rossellini.