Fellini. Eight and a half + lecture

Federico Fellini invites viewers into the depths of his imagination — colourful, full of humour, nostalgia and magic. The audience of Kosmos Cinema will be introduced to it as part of a lecture by Kamil Szczygieł, film selector of the Ars Independent Festival, author of the blog Post-Kino.

“Eight and a Half” is a portrait of an artist who, at a moment of creative crisis, is lost between reality and dreams. Guido (Marcello Mastroianni) is looking for an idea for his new film, but instead of a script, he finds a labyrinth of memories, women and dreams that form a picture of his own life.

The rocket, the sanatorium, the harem, the children's spell “Asa Nisi Masa” and the final procession are not surreal embellishments, but elements of an autobiographical ritual and an attempt to sort out the chaos that can no longer be solved by plot. In the film itself, Guido confesses: “I wanted to make an honest film. Without any lies.” In this sense, Fellini's work is both autotematic and autobiographical: it analyzes the mechanisms of creativity, but also exposes the spiritual, emotional and aesthetic chaos from which this work is born.

On the big screen, “Eight and a Half” impresses even more - the monumental frames, the excellent music of Nino Rota and the charisma of Marcel Mastroianni make it difficult to take your eyes off. It is a film that has delighted viewers and critics around the world, winning the most important awards including the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film (winning with Roman Polanski's “Knife in the Water”, among others) and remains to this day one of the most important works about the very process of creation in the entire history of cinema. Filmmakers around the world unanimously cite this title as an example of a work that allowed them to understand what the magic of cinema is and the essence of the director's profession.