Intervista

Screening on Film

Directed by Federico Fellini.
With Sergio Rubini, Marcello Mastroianni, Anita Ekberg.
Italy, 1987, 35mm, color, 105 min.
Italian with English subtitles.

Intervista combines a film-within-a-film, the essay memoir, a playful recollection of previous works, and an eerie conflation of past and present in this surreal and imaginative distillation of a man’s life and work. As Fellini prepares to direct an adaptation of Kafka’s Amerika, his every move and gesture is captured by a Japanese documentary crew. Reminiscing about his first visit to the studio as a young reporter, Fellini takes the Japanese crew, and Marcello Mastroianni, on a nostalgic visit to Anita Ekberg’s house in the country. Conceived as a tribute to famed Cinecittá Studios on its fiftieth anniversary, this affectionate divertissement, lightly balancing illusion and reality and bubbling with magical stories from Fellini’s past, is the director’s valentine to the movies and the filmmaking process.