L'Italo-Americano

THURSDAY, APRIL 6, 2017 www.italoamericano.org 16 L'Italo-Americano SIMONE SANNIO I n the summer of 2015, the city of Bologna hosted in its town hall a successful exhibi- tion titled Em ilia-Rom agna, ter r a di cineas ti (Emilia- Romagna, a land of filmmakers): inspired by an eponymous essay written in 1990 by the influential film critic Renzo Renzi, who identified this region as the one "where many of the best Italian filmmakers w ere born and trained", this occasion was only the latest attempt at deciphering the reas ons for this land's extremely remarkable cinematic fecundity. After all, it is a fact that Emilia-Romagna happened to be the birthplace of such inno- vative and important directors as P ier P aolo P as olini, V alerio Zurlini, F ederico F ellini, Michelangelo Antonioni, Pupi Avati, Marco Bellocchio, and Bernardo Bertolucci. We are now going to focus on the close relationship between this region and its cinema by fol- lowing the tracks of some of Italy's best-known filmmakers in a three-part itinerary to discover their hometow ns . M oving through F ellini's Rimini, A nto nioni's F errara, and Bertolucci's Parma, in particular, we will visit the places which are most closely related to these great directors' life and works w hile als o looking at how Emilia-Romagna was immortal- ized on the silver screen, thus entering cinema history through their camera eye. Our starting point in this jour- ney is none other than the birth- place of Federico Fellini, the cel- ebrated author of such cinematic landmarks as La strada, Nights of Cabiria (Le notti di Cabiria), and La dolce vita, among other masterpieces. Before he moved to Rome to begin the filmmaking career that would win him multi- ple Academy Awards and legit- imize him as one of the most influential directors of all times, Fellini lived for almost twenty years in Rimini, the famous city of the Romagna coast where he was born in 1920. Located on the Adriatic Sea, Rimini has long been known as a renowned seaside resort and art city; for movie-goers from all over the world, however, it is most of all an unreal, dreamlike location belonging to our collective con- s cious nes s , if not an actual "place of the mind": the one rep- resented by the Maestro in his films. In fact, Fellini had a strange relationship with his hometown: even though he actually never shot a single frame in his native city, as he told in his essay Il mio paese (My hometown) the direc- tor kept returning several times to the Rimini of his youth, but only to rebuild it and re-invent it through the cinematic eye according to his childhood dreams and memories . Ultimately, many of the city's landmarks that Fellini's specta- tors believe to be true are just imaginary places: for example, the seafront in some of the most evocative autobiographical scenes from 8½, or the Rocca Malatestiana (Castel Sismondo) recons tructed on s et for the opening scene of The Clowns (I clow ns ), in w hich a boy – arguably the young Fellini – sees a circus tent set up outside his window. I vitelloni (1953), a film about the adventures of five young men from a small town on the Adriatic, was the first of Fellini's works to be entirely set in Rimini, at least ideally: as a matter of fact, even though the film is clearly autobiographical, I vitelloni was eventually shot in Lido di Ostia, so that none of the recognizable locations – such as the harbor, the seafront, or the station – are in fact in Rimini. Nonetheless, the film was instru- mental in shaping the public's understanding of this city's real spirit. The work in which Fellini's hometown plays the most impor- tant role, however, is undoubted- ly Amarcord (1973), whose title came from the Romagnol dialect for the phrase "I remember". Recalling his youth and child- hood memories once again twen- ty years after his first cinematic efforts, for this film the Maestro decided to literally rebuild 1930s Rimini inside Rome's Cinecittà studios. Most notably, the direc- tor included a reconstruction of the legendary, five-star Grand Hotel Rimini, the setting for many memorable episodes of Amarcord which in fact originat- ed from young Fellini's day- dreams about this majestic and mysterious building. But other distinguishing features of the city are important as well in this film: for example, the Piazza Cavour main square – with its Arengo S taircas e (w here the F as cis t gymnastics display takes place) and its Fountain of the Pine Cone (on which a peacock rests during the snowfall scene) – or else the Fulgor Cinema, where Fellini saw his first film ever (Maciste all'inferno) and Amarcord's pro- tagonist, Titta, tries to make an advance on Gradisca, the village beauty. In recent years, the city of Rimini decided to honor his most famous resident by giving his name to the local airport, as well as to the park and square sur- rounding the Grand Hotel. In addition, the local people are working for the realization of a museum dedicated to Fellini. But all in all, almost every corner of Rimini already hints at this great director's profound genius: from his native hous e on V ia Dardanelli No. 10 to the ceme- tery which is the final resting place of his w ife G iulietta Masini and him, lying under the monument by the well-known artist Arnaldo Pomodoro, who was inspired by Fellini's film And the Ship Sails On (E la nave va). There are two more places, however, in which the Maestro's presence is particularly felt: the streets along Rimini's seafront, which carry the name of Fellini's films, and especially his beloved fishermen's village of Borgo San Giuliano (located outside the ancient city walls, just beyond the Roman Bridge of Augustus and Tiberius), on whose houses' facades are colorful murals reproducing scenes and charac- ters from his greatest master- pieces. Rimini is the birthplace of Federico Fellini, the celebrated author of many cinematic masterpieces. © marina99 Federico Fellini. © chezmoreau ALL AROUND ITALY TRAVEL TIPS DESTINATIONS ACTIVITIES Emilia-Romagna, Land of Filmmakers (Part I): Fellini and Rimini

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