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Political Fellini
Journey to the End of Italy
Andrea Minuz
Translated from the Italian by Marcus Perryman
228 pages, 16 illus., bibliog., index
ISBN 978-1-78238-819-7 $135.00/£99.00 / Hb / Published (October 2015)
ISBN 978-1-78533-828-1 $34.95/£27.95 / Pb / Published (February 2018)
eISBN 978-1-78238-820-3 eBook
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Reviews
“As a scholar deeply immersed in Italian culture, Minuz knows the material inside and out, and his fresh interpretations of Fellini’s films reference both the political and artistic climate in which they were created. Smoothly translated by Perryman, Political Fellini is a truly valuable book, one that delves deep into Fellini as a critic of politics on a larger scale and society as a whole… Highly recommended.” · Choice
“Political Fellini is a well-researched and -referenced study of Fedrerico Fellini, Italian cinema, and culture. He gives deep insight into Italian cinema and political culture. Both students and experts of cinema will hugely benefit from Political Fellini. It is the first full-length biography and study of Fedrerico Fellini as a great Italian filmmaker. It is a must read for everyone who is interested in cinema.” · The Washington Book Review
Description
Federico Fellini is often considered a disengaged filmmaker, interested in self-referential dreams and grotesquerie rather than contemporary politics. This book challenges that myth by examining the filmmaker’s reception in Italy, and by exploring his films in the context of significant political debates. By conceiving Fellini’s cinema as an individual expression of the nation’s “mythical biography,” the director’s most celebrated themes and images — a nostalgia for childhood, unattainable female figures, fantasy, the circus, carnival — become symbols of Italy’s traumatic modernity and perpetual adolescence.
Andrea Minuz is Assistant Professor of Film & Media Studies in the Department of Art History and Perfor;ming Arts, University of Rome “La Sapienza”. He is the author of La Shoah e la cultura visuale. Cinema, memoria, spazio pubblico (Bulzoni Editore, 2010) [The Holocaust and Visual Culture: Film, Memory, the Public Sphere].
Marcus Perryman is the co-editor and co-translator of The Selected Poetry and Prose of Vittorio Sereni (University of Chicago Press, 2006), the author and translator of The Journey of G. Mastorna: The Film Fellini Didn’t Make (Berghahn Books, 2013) and the translator of Orson Welles in Italy by Alberto Anile (Indiana University Press, 2013).