simply Marcello

simply Marcello

Fellini Museum – Palazzo del Fulgor
2° e 3° floor
Piazzetta San Martino, Rimini

With a collection of more than 100 images, including set photos, stolen shots from the set and some precious stills, Rimini is preparing to celebrate the 100th birthday of Marcello Mastroianni, paying tribute not only to his talent and his extraordinary human sympathy, but also to his special relationship with Federico Fellini. In fact, on Thursday 31 October, a date that every year commemorates the anniversary of Fellini’s death, the special event that Rimini is dedicating to Mastroianni will be inaugurated with the photographic exhibition Semplicemente Marcello. Il cinema, il fascino, lo stile di un antidivo di successo and the two events scheduled at the Cinema Fulgor, with an afternoon meeting to remember the actor through a conversation full of memories, testimonies and stories, followed by the documentary made on his centenary by Fabrizio Corallo, also author of the subject and screenplay with Silvia Scola.

The programme of events on Thursday 31st is proposed by the Fellini Museum of the Municipality of Rimini as part of the off initiatives of I luoghi dell’anima, the festival promoted by the Tonino Guerra Association – chaired by Andrea Guerra – taking place from 10th to 15th December between Sant’Arcangelo and Rimini, with the support of the Reel project of the InterReg Italy-Croatia 2021/2027 European programme.

The photo exhibition, curated by Laura Delli Colli, journalist and cinema expert, is the first of three events dedicated to Marcello Mastroianni on Thursday afternoon, 31 December: it will be inaugurated at 2 p.m. in Palazzo del Fulgor and is made up of a selection of 120 images that aim to portray his multifaceted talent and versatility, qualities that mark the exceptional history of one of the greatest actors in Italian cinema. A talent which, thanks to the international fame he achieved as the protagonist of Fellini’s two most iconic films, La dolce vita and 8½, established him as a symbol of the Italian way of life throughout the world.

The exhibition on Marcello Mastroianni Simply Marcello. Il cinema, il fascino, lo stile di un antidivo di successo is co-financed by the European project REEL A cinematographic journey between Italy and Croatia belongs to the European Union programme Interreg Italy-Croatia, in which the Municipality of Rimini participates as a Partner.

REEL will use the audiovisual sector and its potential in generating interest and emotions, to promote new tourist destinations, at the same time digital and technological solutions will provide visitors with immersive experiences of natural and archaeological sites.
The REEL project is managed by the City Cultural Systems Sector – Dynamic and Attractive City Department – U.O. Cineteca Comunale and Museo Fellini. The project started on 1/03/2024 and will run for 36 months

Project Partners

1. Fondazione Apulia Film Commission (IT) Lead Partner
2. City of Venice (IT)
3. Istrian Cultural Agency (HR)
4. Art-kino (HR))
5. Public Institution Dubrovnik Cinemas (HR))
6. Municipality of Rimini (IT)

Superstar

SUPERSTARS – MUSIC ICONS ON EXHIBITION

At the Ala di Isotta of Castel Sismondo the shots of photographer Fernando Borrello and the art installation by Marco Nereo Rotelli TO BE A NORMAL STAR

The face radiating light of David Bowie, Mick Jagger‘s grimaces, the irreverent energy of Madonna and Taylor Swift, Pink Floyd and Bruce Springsteen, Chet Baker and Miles Davis, Michael Jackson and B.B. King, and many others including the Italians Andrea Bocelli, Zucchero, Vasco Rossi, Pino Daniele and Giorgia.

International icons, great stars portrayed in the shots of photographer Fernando Borrello, during the 30 years spent alongside David Zard, the most famous Italian manager of all time, will inhabit the spaces of the Ala di Isotta of Castel Sismondo, in Rimini, from Thursday 8 August to 29 September, thanks to the new exhibition Superstars – Music Icons on Exhibition, produced and organised by Blu&Blu Network srl, in collaboration with Sandro Di Martino – PROMARGROUP, who also worked alongside David Zard as Vinyl DJ for over 16 years, with the support of PRIMAFILA MAGAZINE and sponsored by the Municipality of Rimini.

After the success of Queen Unseen – set up last year in the same space of the Rimini fortress that houses the Fellini Museum in its main body – a new exhibition will bring to life unique moments in the history of international music, 30 years of concerts in every corner of the globe. A three hundred and sixty degree journey through the history of rock, pop, jazz and soul music.

Superstars – Music Icons on Exhibition will be open every day except Mondays from 16.00 to 22.00.

More than eighty photographs by Fernando Borrello will be on display. During his career, he has also been a contributor to important newspapers and prestigious record companies such as RCA, EMI and Virgin, and a set photographer in the world of cinema and television, where he had the opportunity to work alongside Renzo Arbore.

Special Guest at SUPERSTARS will be Marco Nereo Rotelli, the internationally recognised ‘Artist of Light’ for his spectacular light installations in the capitals of the world. The Venetian artist, protagonist in 10 editions of the Venice Biennale, in museums and galleries all over the world and in centres such as the Espace Culturel Louis Vuitton in Paris, will present the unprecedented “TO BE A NORMAL STAR”, an itinerary of 7 works dedicated to MADONNA, BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN, LOU REED, FREDDIE MERCURY, DAVID BOWIE, MICK JAGGER and TAYLOR SWIFT with a surprising result that exalts his stylistic signature in which the word becomes a dimension of identity. Word that also in the Rimini exhibition becomes the unity of all.
For info and online ticket purchase: fernandoborrellophoto.com

La Biennale del disegno al Fellini Museum

Palazzo del Fulgor
2° e 3° floor

edited by Luigino Bardellotto, Adolfo Conti e Patrizio De Mattio

Cartel de cine means playbill in Spanish, but in Cuba it means much more.
Cuba, 1959. It is a period of political and social, but also artistic revolution. The first protagonist is the cinema, as an innovative and anti-commercial art form.
The way of communicating cinema also changes: even film posters had to be rethought, avoiding the established canons (big star faces, mother scenes, suggestive slogans) of traditional film posters. The new carteles (produced in 51 x 76 cm screen-printing technique) were in this way freed of their advertising function and left graphic designers complete freedom in interpreting the film, contributing to a veritable visual and conceptual revolution for cinema audiences.
El cartel de cine became to all intents and purposes a masterpiece of art displayed in the streets.
The exhibition is structured from 1959 to 1979 in a diachronic sense, with a final section dedicated to today’s production. The posters of the most important authors are exhibited along with photographs, newspapers, sketches and preparatory layouts. All the original material comes from the “Luigino Bardellotto – Centro Studi Cartel Cubano” collection in San Donà di Piave, the world’s largest private collection of Cuban posters.


Palazzo del Fulgor
1° piano
edited by Andrea Lo Savio

The Rose of Bagdad is the first legendary Italian animated feature film (a record shared with Nino Pagot’s I Fratelli Dinamite). It was made between 1940 and 1949 and it was the first Italian film to be shot entirely in colour using the technicolour technique.

Thousands and thousands of drawings (including sketches, layouts and production drawings) and “rodovetri” (transparent sheets painted on the back and applied to the backdrops to allow the movements of the characters to be photographed, frame by frame), several hundred detailed backdrops, even in large format, make up the extraordinary paper heritage that still allows us today, in the digital age, to fully grasp the extraordinary work carried out for the making of the film (76 minutes long for 120 thousand sequences at step 1 – up to 24 drawings for one second of animation).

Around thirty original works from private lenders, of extraordinary quality, are on show to the public for the first time.


Castel Sismondo
Ala di Isotta

 

EVERYTHING SPOKE SO VIVIDLY, drawings from the FRAC – Picardie Collection, Amiens.

The FRAC in Amiens is considered one of the most important, if not the most important public collection in Europe specialising in drawing. It brings together 1,300 works by 250 French and international artists, documenting – at the highest level of excellence – the various facets of contemporary drawing from the post-World War II period to the present day.

Everything spoke so vividly, chosen as the title of the exhibition in Rimini, recalls the feeling of dizziness experienced by the French writer Stendhal while on the Grand Tour in Italy in 1817.

 

And please stop crying – Photographic exhibition dedicated to Giulietta Masina

Italo Calvino spoke of a ‘Masina zone’ in Fellini’s cinema, referring to that dimension of the director’s imagination that most recalls the circus and its figures. Of those figures, Masina was the most inspired and gifted interpreter: she possessed their lightness, vitality, grace and candour.

With La strada, in 1957, Fellini won the first of his five Oscars and at only 37 years of age she entered the Olympus of the greats of cinema, but it was Giulietta Masina with her interpretation of Gelsomina who conquered and moved audiences all over the world.
Charlie Chaplin recognised her affinity with his Tramp, and among the spectators in those distant 1950s was a young Argentinean named Mario Bergoglio who, decades later and having become Pope in the meantime, would remember that character whose gaze “knows how to capture in winter what is already spring“.
Only one year goes by and Fellini wins his second Oscar with Le notti di Cabiria. Again Giulietta Masina as the protagonist, perhaps in the role she most loved and in which she perhaps most recognised herself. To her, whom Fellini often portrays in Libro dei Sogni with the features of a fairy, the Fellini Museum dedicates a photographic exhibition.

Seventy years after La strada and just a few weeks after the thirtieth anniversary of her death, from Thursday 22nd February, the anniversary of her birth, until Monday 2nd April, 34 photos from the Penzo and Reporters Associati / Fondazione Cineteca di Bologna archives will be on show on the second and third floors of the Palazzo del Fulgor. These 34 photos come from the sets of the seven Fellini films in which Masina starred: in addition to the two films already mentioned, there are also Luci del varietà, Lo sceicco bianco, Il bidone, Giulietta degli spiriti and Ginger and Fred.

On the occasion of the inauguration, Thursday 22nd February from 4 pm, admission is free to Fulgor Palace.

Presentation of the book Amarcord

On Friday 23 February at the Cineteca of Rimini at 5 p.m., there will be the presentation of the book

Amarcord raccontato dalla stampa dell’epoca
(Edizioni Sabinae, 2023)
edited by Giuseppe Ricci in dialogue with Davide Bagnaresi.

As Gianfranco Angelucci writes in the introductory text:
A surprising read to trace much of the emotions that the film never ceases to reserve for us half a century after its appearance. A collection of newspaper cuttings gathered by Giuseppe Ricci, a specialist in the genre, capable of rendering even a press review a narrative.”

Free entry

Lilian the Fighter

From 2 February to 1 April 2024, on the first floor of the Palazzo del Fulgor, a selection of 30 drawings from the collection of Liliana Betti: Italian writer, scriptwriter and director, friend and collaborator of Federico Fellini
The Liliana Betti Fund comprises 109 autograph drawings and 7 postcards recently acquired by the Ministry of Culture and entrusted to the Fellini Museum for safekeeping and preservation.
Most of the drawings are sketches that were probably made on the set, in the breaks between takes, with comic strips and playful inscriptions that express sympathy, confidence, affection and esteem and offer an insight not only into the world of Fellini’s private affections, but also into the enormous importance that drawing had in his creative process.

VI EDITION THE SEVENTH ART – CINEMA AND INDUSTRY

Also in 2024, the days dedicated to cinema and its industry return to Rimini. From 2 to 5 May, the city will come alive with the events of the 6th edition of La Settima Arte Cinema e Industria, the event organised by Confindustria Romagna and the University of Bologna – Department of Arts, in collaboration with the Municipality of Rimini, which offers the opportunity to learn and explore
how films and audiovisual productions are born and created.

The project highlights two fundamental themes: “Making Cinema”, representing the film industry with all its human, economic, intellectual and professional resources, and the “Cultural Revolution”, understood as the creative expression capable of breaking the mould of the present.

Each edition of the project sees the interweaving of these two strands in the programme of the days, which includes the Cinema and Industry Award, chaired by the famous director Pupi Avati, screenings, previews, conferences, masterclasses, exhibitions and book presentations with authors. The meetings are free and open to all citizens, with a view to a close relationship with the territory.

In a year that sees the candidature of Rimini-Romagna as Capital of Culture 2026, the event stands as a significant moment to promote and disseminate the values of the film industry.

“La Settima Arte – Cinema and Industry” is the cinema festival of Rimini and Romagna, an event that unites industry and cinema, businesses, universities and institutions.

Find out more

Comics and the Shoah. The image in the service of memory

An unprecedented historical event, the Shoah occupies a prominent place in contemporary collective memory. Comics and graphic novels have also tackled the subject, not without caution, mistakes and hesitations, sometimes with brilliance.
Since when, and how, have comic book and graphic novel authors taken up the subject?
How did censorship intervene on some publications during the Second World War?
How are testimonies transmitted?
How do stories develop according to the political, social and aesthetic references of our time, while certain forms of anti-Semitism persist?

The exhibition attempts to answer these questions by analysing various works published from the 1930s to the present day in different countries, in particular the United States, Japan, France, Belgium and Italy.
Among the many works on display are some cult favourites such as Captain America and Mickey Mouse, the fascist magazine il Balilla, the History of the 3 Adolfs by the Japanese Osamu Tezuka, the adventures of the Belgian bellboy Spirou, the disruptive Maus by Art Spiegelman, but also various lesser-known publications, often produced together with the last witnesses.

Entrance is free, for groups of more than 10 people and for classes booking is compulsory, with a guided tour organised by the Istituto per la storia della Resistenza e dell’Età contemporanea della provincia di Rimini.

Scientific curators: Didier Pasamonik and Joël Kotek
Curatorship: Marie-Edith Agostini
Coordination: Caroline François
Italian version edited by Laura Fontana and Bruna Lo Biundo

THE FEDERICO CIRCUS: fantastic paintings between dream and reality

Once again this year for the Christmas holidays, the Fellini Museum is dedicating a special event to the little ones: THE FEDERICO CIRCUS: fantastic pictures between dream and reality, a visit to the Fellini Museum with a creative workshop for children aged 6 to 10.

The guided tour is an invitation to discover the fantastic world of Fellini.
The children will be accompanied on a tour of the museum through storytelling and play with a “treasure hunt” to collect the images that will later give rise to the creation of the “fantastic picture“.
The workshop is intended to offer children a moment of play and socialisation where each child will express his or her creative potential and uniqueness, thus becoming the star director of his or her own fantasy world.

Each child will receive a gift of a copy of the book Gelsomina e il tamburo magico (Gelsomina and the Magic Drum), inspired by Federico Fellini’s film La strada and realised by the children of the “D. Alighieri”, “E. Fermi” and “A. Marvelli” schools as part of the CEET (Culture, Education, Empowerment, Territory) Network project, supported by the Fund for the fight against juvenile educational poverty and promoted by the Associazione Arcobaleno ODV and Arci Romagna Cesena Rimini APS, in a network with the Municipality of Rimini.
Participation is free for a maximum of 15 children per group.
Adults can leave the children with the guides or, if they wish, visit the museum with a reduced ticket of 5 euro.
Mandatory booking by writing to museofellini@comune.rimini.it, indicating
– name and surname of the child
– age
– a parent’s telephone number.
The beautiful poster was created from a watercolour by Ambara Chiara Zuccali with graphics by Jyoti Leila Sadegholvaad

Two rounds available:
29 DECEMBER
morning 10.30 a.m. – 12.30 p.m.
afternoon 4.30 p.m. – 6.30 p.m.

Fellini/Trubbiani – E la nave va (1983-2023)

The exhibition Fellini/Trubbiani – E la nave va (1983-2023), promoted by the Fellini Museum in Rimini, is an opportunity to celebrate the fortieth anniversary of one of Federico Fellini’s greatest films, while telling the story of a truly extraordinary encounter, that between the director and sculptor Valeriano Trubbiani.

Fellini, fascinated by Trubbiani’s works ever since he saw them for the first time at the 1972 Venice Biennale (which also left a mark on Nobel Prize-winning writer José Saramago, as we read in the long, intense passage on Trubbiani in his Manuale di pittura e calligrafia), finally found the right combination to involve the artist in a series of scenic solutions for the 1983 film. Trubbiani was commissioned to deal with three things: the gash on the hull of the liner Gloria N., the sick rhinoceros and the Austro-Hungarian battleship.

The exhibition will present a significant selection of Trubbiani’s sketches and drawings, as well as a rich series of photographs, those of the visit that Fellini made to his atelier in Candia di Ancona in 1982 and those of the actual work carried out at Cinecittà, also documented by ten original drawings by the director, a sort of guide-notes for the sculptor.

Fifty Candles for Amarcord

In 1973 Amarcord was released in Italian cinemas.
To celebrate its 50th birthday, in addition to the screening of the film, two books will be presented.

On Monday 11 December at the Fulgor Cinema at 9 p.m., two books dedicated to Amarcord will be presented, fresh off the presses: in the first, Nicola Bassano retraces the history of the birth of Fellini’s masterpiece, analysing its main themes and recounting, through anecdotes and curiosities, the parable that led it to win the Oscar for best foreign film; in the second, the authors compile a veritable dictionary that goes from A for Amarcord to Z for Zeus, passing through Biscein, Fulgor, Gradisca, Nonno and Rex.

The event will be attended by authors Nicola Bassano, Davide Bagnaresi and Gianfranco Miro Gori.

Amarcord Story
by Nicola Bassano (Aliberti, 2023)
Amarcord from A to Z
by Davide Bagnaresi and Gianfranco Miro Gori (Edizioni Sabinae, 2023)

followed by the screening of
AMARCORD by Federico Fellini (Italy 2023, 123′)

INTIMATE FELLINI – Drawings and words

The most immediate expression of Federico Fellini’s extraordinary imagination has always been drawing, both during the preparation of films and in those more intimate, carefree and therefore joyful moments when, having drained himself of all creative energies, he would dive into the more relaxing and liberating ones that drawing suggested to him.
It was a special time when he became a child again.
Playing with felt-tip pens, he would put all his fantasies, anxieties, memories, fears, desires, imaginations and dreams on a sheet of paper.
In fact, behind each of his drawings, behind each character, there was a story, a small script, a mysterious interweaving of reality and fantasy, a paradoxical plot.
Once the drawing was finished and perfected, and after he had finished putting the finishing touches on the stroke and the colour, if everything had turned out exactly as he wanted it, he would give it away with a smirk of complicity.
If not, he would tear it up.

Thus was born this collection of forty drawings that are part of the collection of Daniela Barbiani, Federico Fellini’s niece and his assistant director in the last four films from E la Nave va to La Voce della Luna.
The drawings exhibited here for the first time as a national preview on the initiative of the Fellini Museum and the Cineteca of the Municipality of Rimini, have previously been at the Guggenheim in NY, the Cannes Film Festival, the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Nancy, the Renault Foundation in Paris and the Puskin Museum in Moscow.

DISNEY 100 – A century of animated short film masterpieces

In the year of Fellini’s many anniversaries, Rimini, with the Fellini Museum and the Amarcort Film Festival, also celebrates the centenary of Disney, founded on 16 October 1923.

An event organised by Amarcort Film Festival with the Fellini Museum presents a work for each year: a selection of original sketches, paintings and cels from private collections, used to create the famous Disney shorts from the 1920s to the present day.

The gallery also includes the first historical Mickey Mouse short, Steamboat Willie, from 1928.

Also dedicated to the Disney centenary is the special event scheduled at the Teatro degli Atti on the evening of 17 November: “Disney 100 – A Century of Masterpieces of Animated Short Films” with expert Federico Fiecconi who, starting from the artwork on show at the Fellini Museum, will present on screen some of the cornerstones of the endless filmography of the magic Californian studio, recounting the behind the scenes of the extraordinary journey of Disney’s creativity.

Fellini meets Mickey Mouse

On the centenary of Disney and 32 years after the first publication of “Mickey Mouse Presents La Strada“, the Fellini Museum and Amarcort Film Festival celebrate the meeting between Federico Fellini and one of the world’s greatest Disney artists, Giorgio Cavazzano, with an exhibition at the Palazzo del Fulgor.

Thirty-two years after its first publication, Mickey Mouse presents La Strada returns to bookshops and comic book stores in a special Limited De Luxe hardback edition with new colours published by Panini Comics. In those now famous plates, with a leap of imagination we also find the meeting between Walt Disney himself and Federico Fellini, which really took place in 1956 when Fellini and Masina were in California for the awarding of the Oscar for Best Foreign Film to La Strada.

Perfect, then, the occasion to renew this union in the city of the genius of cinema, renewing Federico Fellini’s encounter with the work of the magician from Burbank.

The magical encounter between one of the most famous “modern Disney” cartoonists working today, Giorgio Cavazzano, and Federico Fellini, took place on the occasion of the production of the comic strip version of the 1954 film La Strada. The now famous Great Disney Parody Mickey Mouse Presents La Strada, drawn by Cavazzano and scripted by Massimo Marconi, was published in issue 1866 of “Topolino” in September 1991.

Fellini at the time not only gave permission to be portrayed in the story, but also sent his own autograph thank-you drawing to the editorial staff of “Topolino“.

Giorgio Cavazzano was awarded the prize “Un Felliniano nel mondo” (A Felliniano in the world) this year during the Amarcort Film Festival.

Fellini between dream and reality: the photographic contribution of Rodrigo Pais

Photographic exhibition curated by Glenda Furini and Guido Gambetta

The series of images that make up the exhibition bears witness to some important passages in Federico Fellini’s artistic career: Rodrigo Pais portrays him in the street, on public occasions, in interviews, previews and award ceremonies.
A section of the exhibition is dedicated to the events that inspired or were inspired by the film La dolce vita.

Roman photojournalist Rodrigo Pais entered the world of photography in the mid-1950s, collaborating mainly with the daily newspapers Paese, Paese Sera, l’Unità and the weekly Vie Nuove, but also with other newspapers and magazines of the time such as Corriere della Sera, Corriere d’informazione, La Stampa, Il Giornale d’Italia, Il Mondo.
Together with fellow photographer Giorgio Sartarelli, he founded the Pais & Sartarelli agency, active until 1972. The photojournalist activity lasted almost 50 years and ended in 1998.
The photographic and professional archive documents photojournalistic activity from 1955 to 1998 and consists of almost 380,000 phototypes.

It is part of the collections of the Bologna University Library, the University’s central library located in the heart of the university citadel, inside the ancient Palazzo Poggi.

RIMINI REVISITED – BEYOND THE SEA

The Riviera revisited twenty years later in the photographs of the Rimini reporter, an exhibition and two venues in Rimini and Savignano sul Rubicone

Curated by Mario Beltrambini and Jana Liskova.

“Rimini Revisited” takes the form of a critical reinterpretation of the original project of the “Rimini” exhibition, which the reporter dedicated to his city and which was staged posthumously in 2003.

In the light of the in-depth study of the archive and in particular the discovery of the original mock-up, drawn up by Marco Pesaresi, of the book that was created at the same time as the exhibition and published in 2003, which was therefore also posthumous, the revisited traces and reconstructs the continuous, tormented and obsessive research that led Marco Pesaresi to select, from the thousands of shots taken, the 73 photos exhibited and published then.

Today, after 20 years, new images are added and exhibited (the exhibition consists of 173 photographs in total), thanks to the considerable wealth of documents that the author left behind, contents that Marco Pesaresi repeatedly recounted and described in his texts and diaries. The result is a great fresco on “Romagnolità”, represented by the combination of culture, traditions and landscapes that characterise the Romagna Riviera. This adds a new chapter to the great story in images that Marco Pesaresi has built around the atmospheres, people, excesses and originality of his land and his city, one of the most visited areas in Europe.

Federico Fellini behind the scenes

102 years after his birth, the great director lives again in Patrizia Mannajuolo‘s shots from the set of “La città delle donne”

Usually, when portraying celebrities, one is conditioned in some way by a preconceived idea. Patrizia Mannajuolo, on the other hand, in her off-stage photographs manages to shoot with a free mind and an attentive gaze, capturing moments of rare spontaneity and revealing the characters as if she were seeing them for the first time. His eyes focus on details already investigated by so many, but with a peculiar, unprecedented gaze, showing us the real and genuine Fellini, far from the officialdom of public appearances or authorised backstage. In these shots we relive the emotions, contrasts, joys and discomforts of a decisive encounter, of a visionary season of passions and anxieties. In theatre 5 in Cinecittà, which was the maestro’s ‘home’, Patrizia explores set and set with the discretion and malice of a photojournalist, in a memorable sequence of unexpected and revealing snapshots.

Patrizia Mannajuolo, neapolitan, dedicated herself to photography from a very young age, attended Vittorugo Contino’s studio in Rome and collaborated with directors, actors and producers; among her most significant experiences were working with Roberto Rossellini and his son Renzo for the television series La lotta dell’uomo per la sua sopravvivenza (1970); with Federico Fellini on the set of La città delle donne (1979), with Liliana Cavani for La pelle (1981) based on the novel of the same name by Curzio Malaparte, and then with Alberto Sordi and Monica Vitti for the filming of Io so che tu sai che io so (1982), a subject by Rodolfo Sonego produced by Augusto Caminito, which was followed by a special directed by Patrizia Mannajuolo on the problematic relationships of couples. In 2018, the photographs from behind the scenes of Federico Fellini’s La città delle donne were exhibited at the Neapolitan art gallery Al Blu di Prussia, in the exhibition spaces of the former Hospital of San Rocco in Matera and, in 2019, at Villa Fiorentino in Sorrento. The photographic work was published in the volume Federico Fellini. The eye of Patrizia Mannajuolo, artem, Naples 2020.

Rimini 1993-2023: Fellini’s funeral in Marco Pesaresi’s unpublished images

On 31 October, thirty years ago, Federico Fellini dies. A state funeral is held in Rome and a funeral chamber is set up in Studio 5 at Cinecittà. The entire film world, from directors to extras, from actors to workers, paid homage to the artist that everyone in that immense 400 square metre shed called the ‘lighthouse’. On the evening of 3 November, Fellini made his final journey back to Rimini, where a second funeral chamber was set up in the column room of the Galli theatre. The next day, the city rallied around “that boy from Rimini whom the whole world will admire” as Sergio Zavoli said, in a packed Piazza Cavour, during the funeral oration.

Twenty thousand people from Rimini accompanied the coffin on its journey from Piazza Cavour to the cemetery, a swaying tide that continued to applaud and embrace “the Rimini boy who returned to the Borgo”, accompanying him step by step along his places of memory.

There are two obligatory stops for the procession before arriving at the cemetery, one in front of the Fulgor cinema where Fellini had discovered the seventh art as a child, and the other in that corner of the historic centre where the bridge fades into the Borgo.

Thirty years later, the city of Rimini pays tribute to the “universal dimension of that mourning” with an exhibition entitled “Rimini 1993-2023: Fellini’s funeral in the unpublished images of Marco Pesaresi”, curated by Mario Beltrambini and Jana Liskova and realised by the Municipality of Rimini in collaboration with the Municipality of Savignano sul Rubicone and the Savignano Immagini association.

The exhibition presents the 30 selected images – of the over 240 that make up the entire reportage – of Federico Fellini’s funeral taken by photographer Marco Pesaresi, who was present that day and was ready to recount through images the Maestro’s last visit to his Rimini. Images that have only recently come to light and that today allow even the youngest audience to appreciate the significance of Rimini’s farewell to the Maestro thirty years ago.

“The day of the funeral was grey and rainy,” commented exhibition curators Mario Beltrambini and Jana Liskova, “as if the sky itself wept along with all of Rimini, which had come to bid farewell to Federico Fellini. In the midst of this melancholic atmosphere, Marco Pesaresi was present. With his camera, he captured the essence of that moment, the palpable emotion that pervaded the air and the collective emotion of the city in mourning. Through these photographs, Marco documented not only the event itself, but also the resilience and strength of the community in its darkest hour”.

Marco Pesaresi’s photographs documenting Federico Fellini’s last farewell were kept for thirty years in his archives, far from the eyes of the public and the world. Only recently, after a long time, have these precious images come back to light. The opening of the Pesaresi archives has made it possible to bring those touching and historic moments back to life. The images can now tell a new and ancient story at the same time, offering a window on the past and its rediscovery, adding a significant chapter to Pesaresi’s visual narrative and its indelible impact on Rimini and its homeland.

Spadò: Arte, amori e spionaggio nella Parigi anni ’30

Alberto Spadolini (Ancona 1907 – Paris 1972) landed in Romagna in the mid-1960s; he opened an atelier in Riccione, where he painted some of his masterpieces. Moreover, the newspapers of the time wrote, “He created the new atmosphere of the Night at the Grand-Hotel in Rimini, the lion of this Riviera“.

Thanks to the fortuitous discovery in an attic of photographs, documents and posters from all continents, it was possible to reconstruct Spadò‘s life. In his youth, he was a decorator at Gabriele d’Annunzio’s Vittoriale; he attended Anton Giulio Bragaglia’s Teatro degli Indipendenti where he was a set designer and painter, a pupil of Giorgio De Chirico. Having emigrated to France at the end of the 1920s, he became a dancer with Serge Lifar and Joséphine Baker (with whom he had a stormy love affair); an actor with Jean Gabin and Jean Marais; a director with Django Reinhardt and Suzy Solidor; a singer with Mistinguett (he recorded a few records in New York); a journalist for the Parisian magazine Sourire; a favourite model for the photographer Dora Maar … a secret agent in the anti-Nazi Resistance.

In December 2022, on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of his death, the Atelier ‘Alberto Spadolini’ was reopened to the public in Riccione; furthermore, the magazine Mirà, published by the ‘Nouveau Musée National’ in Monte-Carlo, under the presidency of Princess Caroline of Monaco, dedicated the article “Spadolini, une vie dédiée à l’art, à l’amour et à l’espionnage” to him.

Thursday 30 March, 6 and 13 April at 4 p.m. – Fulgor Palace (Cinemino)
Three documentaries will be screened on the occasion of the exhibition:

“Rivage de Paris” (1950, 50′) by director Spadolini, restored by the Archives Français du Film.

“Nous, les gitans” (1951, 25′) by director Spadolini, restored by the Cinématheque Française and presented by director Martin Scorsese as part of the “Toute la mémoire du Monde” (Paris 2012) review.

“Spadò, il danzatore nudo” (2019, 46′), by directors Riccardo De Angelis and Romeo Marconi, with interviews with art historian Stefano Papetti and the President of the “Vittoriale” Giordano Bruno Guerri.

For more information on Alberto Spadolini’s life, consult the site dedicated to him

Amarcord designed

65 frames painted in oil on canvas and panel by artist Agim Sulaj that enhance the colour fields and light cuts that make up the film’s shots.

“It was summer, in the middle of August, I was thirteen years old, in Albania.
“This film is not for you!” my father said, chasing me out of the small living room where we had the television and closing the door. But I, in the half-light of the corridor, bent down, gluing my eye to the lock of that closed door. The television was right in front of it: from Valona one could only get the first channel of the Italian RAI, which was forbidden by the regime of the time. And that was how Federico Fellini’s Amarcord came into my life. I only saw the images, the music came in muffled and so did the words, which I would still not have been able to understand, but I was thunderstruck. Those simple, human, genuine and sincere stories: the family, grandfather, relatives, friends, the small community, the ancient village by the sea narrated in all seasons, the summer heat in the middle of the countryside, the announcement of spring with the wind whirling ‘the little hands’, the autumn that brings the first melancholies, the amazement and joy of the falling snow: those stories were identical to mine.
Never could I have imagined that, among so many cities, when I grew up I would live in Rimini, the city of Fellini, the ‘borgo’ of his Amarcord. And residing in Rimini, and becoming an Italian citizen, Amarcord has accompanied my entire life, because it also tells my ‘amarcord’, the indelible memory of the Vlore of my childhood and very early youth, a city like Rimini, lying on the soft and gentle shores of a luminous sea. Which is the same sea for both of us, that Adriatic that unites, fraternises and makes me happy, because it seems to me that I have never left home. ” Agim Sulaj

Tuesday to Friday
10.00 – 13.00 / 16.00 – 19.00
Saturdays, Sundays and public Holidays
10.00 – 19.00
Monday closed

La prima notte di quiete – 35 shots to commemorate 50 years of the film

In October 1972 Valerio Zurlini’s ‘La prima notte di quiete’ was released in cinemas. It starred Alain Delon, Sonia Petrovna, Giancarlo Giannini, Adalberto Maria Merli, Salvo Randone, Lea Massari, Alida Valli and Renato Salvatori.

Special Guest the city of Rimini, in which the film was entirely set, in its charming melancholic and wintry version.

Images from the Minghini fund of the Gambalunga Library and from Reporters Associati & Archives.

Thanks to Titanus S.P.A.


In collaborazione con

Fellini Forbidden

“I have always found the Maestro’s graphic work brilliant: the simplicity of the stroke and the irony of the ideas. I think this exhibition allows one to fully understand how modern his vision was on the subject of eroticism. As a Rimini resident and art lover, I am very happy that his work can finally be experienced by visitors from all over the world who loved him and continue to love him for his films”. 

Massimiliano Benedetti

Erotic divertissements drawn by Federico Fellini in the 1970s, during the preparation of the shooting of the film Casanova.

On display are 42 small-format plates dedicated by Fellini to ‘Prick’, the Anglo-Saxon nickname with which the Maestro identified his sexual alter ego.

turn your 🔦📱 on!

Collection | Massimiliano Benedetti
Artwork | Luca Giovagnoli
Installation | Barbara Vannucchi B+V studio di architettura
Thanks | Flos

The Orients of Pier Paolo Pasolini

“In a meeting with Pasolini at Cinecittà, for the remake of a scene from the autumn of ’73, I had brought an album with some slides and as Pier Paolo looked at them fascinated he said, “What beautiful places, what beautiful colours!”- as if he were seeing them for the first time – “You made a film where I was the actor and you were the director.”

Roberto Villa

The East, for Pasolini, is a place of the spirit where one finds that desired and dreamed of world, which does not exist in this West and which in that fairytale film, The Flower of the Thousand and One Nights, is brought to the screen with a fantastic narrative and with the colours of dreams. The director had not reneged on his promise: “It will be my most colourful film, the most richly coloured”, and the chosen locations and the Middle Eastern populations already testified to this, along with the costumes by Danilo Donati worn by hundreds of extras.

Unpublished images by Roberto Villa, constructed following the compositional philosophies of art history and communication theory, illustrate the set and off-set of the film.