alr

8 1/2

Screening on Film
Directed by Federico Fellini.
With Marcello Mastroianni, Claudia Cardinale, Anouk Aimée.
Italy, 1963, 35mm, black & white, 135 min.
Italian with English subtitles.

Recipient of over sixty international awards, 8 1/2 is one of the most lauded works in the history of cinema and one of the most celebrated creations about the inability to create. A famous movie director (Mastroianni), unable to find the inspiration to start his new film and harried by his wife, his mistress, and an assortment of industry hangers-on, retreats into personal recollections, dreams, and fantasies—replete with harems, spaceships, and a luminous actress (Cardinale). Described by Fellini as “something between a muddled visit to a psychiatrist and an examination of a disordered conscience with Limbo as the setting,” 8 1/2 is a brilliant portrait of the creative process and a powerful meditation on the relationship between the realms of fantasy and film.

Part of film series

Read more

Martin Scorsese’s Voyage in Italy

Other film series with this film

Read more

Treasures from the Harvard Film Archive: E–I

Read more

The Divine Comedy of Federico Fellini

Read more

The Complete Federico Fellini

Current and upcoming film series

Read more

Fragments of a Faith Forgotten: The Art of Harry Smith

Read more

The Yugoslav Junction: Film and Internationalism in the SFRY, 1957 – 1988

Read more

From the Jenni Olson Queer Film Collection

Read more
a close-up of a Bissau-Guinean woman wearing a scarf on her head and looking directly at the camera with a slight smile

Le Dépays + Sans soleil

Read more
Peter Sellers wearing a large hat with "ME" embroidered on it, and gripping a Pilgrim-like collar

Carol for Another Christmas

Read more

Satyajit Ray’s Apu Trilogy