How Strange to be Named Federico: Scola narrates Fellini (2013)

The film is a reminiscence/portrait of Federico Fellini, put together by Ettore Scola on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the director’s death. In addition to the richness of the movies made by a peerless master—now the common heritage of audiences all over the world—a devoted admirer recalls the privilege of having known him and the emotions that he stirred in those who listened to him, with his irony and his reflections on “life being a party.” Their meeting in the early 1950s; the associations they had in common, with the satirical magazine Marc’Aurelio, with Ruggero Maccari, Alberto Sordi and Marcello Mastroianni; their “pleasure trips” to visit the sets of each other’s films; the studios of Cinecittà, Teatro 5 and other links between the two directors, which cemented their friendship and made it a lasting one. From his debut in 1939 as a cartoonist to his fifth Academy Award in 1993, the year of his seventy-third and last birthday, Federico is recalled by his friend Ettore as a big Pinocchio who, luckily, never became “a well-behaved child.” A short film, perhaps a bit cubist in style, made up of fragments, moments and scattered impressions that alternate with scripted scenes, reconstructed and shot at Cinecittà and archive footage from Rai Teche and the Istituto Luce.