Fellini Today? Some Observations on Fellini's Films and Commercials: From Postwar to Postmodern and A Companion to Federico Fellini

What does Federico Fellini’s cinema tell us today, in the 100th anniversary year of its author’s birth and 28 years after his death? What remains undiscovered in the critical response to the work of one of the most celebrated Italian filmmakers of the 20th century? What is the influence of that work on contemporary cinema and what methodological approaches are better suited to make meaning of its heterogeneity and not infrequent thorniness on important issues such as sexual and gender politics? These are some of the questions posed by two books published in 2020 (Frank Burke, Fellini’s Films and Commercials: From Postwar to Postmodern and A Companion to Federico Fellini. Edited by Frank Burke, Marguerite Waller, and Marita Gubareva) whose goal is to revive a debate that, at least in the Anglo-Saxon world, has been quiet for too long. Taking the two books as a point of departure, this essay focuses on the current state of Fellini studies, addressing matters such as the Fellinian “subject,” individualism, authenticity, self-reflexivity, dream, the sociopolitical, and gender in an effort to understand the role played in film history by one of the most influential Italian filmmakers.