Federico Fellini's Birthday
Next: January 20, 2027
Dreams, put on film.
The story
Where it comes from
Federico Fellini was born in Rimini, Italy, on 20 January 1920, and this Story marks his birthday. As a young man in Rome he sold cartoons and gags to a humour magazine, wrote for radio and joined Roberto Rossellini's writers on Rome, Open City. As a director he mixed dream and reality, memory and fantasy, in films such as La strada, Nights of Cabiria, La dolce vita, 8½ and Amarcord. His films received 23 Academy Award nominations and won eight, and he was given an honorary Oscar for his career in 1993.
How it's celebrated
There is no formal observance, but his birthday is a fine evening for an Italian film night: La strada, with Nino Rota's haunting theme, or Amarcord, his nostalgic look back at growing up in Rimini, which he re-created in Rome's Cinecittà studios.
Did you know
- La dolce vita gave English the word paparazzo, and gave critics the word 'Felliniesque'.
- 8½ is named for the number of films he had made by then: seven features and two shorts.
- He kept notebooks of his dreams, richly illustrated, and used them as raw material for his films.
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