With the Fellini exhibition at the Élysée Museum of Lausanne from June 8 until August 28, 2011, curator Sam Stourdzé, author of a series of works and articles about Chaplin whose collection the Élysée Museum recently acquired, is not on his first cinematic adventure. With Fellini, he goes a bit farther by reconstituting the filmmaker’s work in his century, extending beyond a mere chronological approach by interrogating meaning and relevance.

Bringing together still and motion pictures, showing the pictures that obsessively inspired the filmmaker or those he created that would, in turn, mark and influence their time and beyond. In one word, this exhibition questions and offers multiple and multidirectional interpretations. A great parade that, like its title indicates, explores the “century of pictures or more specifically, the century of making pictures.”

Transversally we find the trends that marked or influenced the filmmaker, from the neo-realism in Rossellini’s films he worked on, to the god-fearing of “La Strada”, before fleeing all trends to delve into the subconscious and dreams that would become the pretexts for his staging by creating a “meta-cinema” that is no stranger to the construction of his myth.

It is the creation of this myth that the exposition explores through four sections displaying pictures, drawings, posters, magazines, documents, but also film clips, rough cuts, edited scenes, amateur films, period news clips and interviews.

The first sequence, “Popular Culture”, explores the elements that helped inspire Fellini: caricatures, comics, the circus, and media in general. The second section, “Fellini at work” brings us to the conception and realization of his movies: collaborating with his writers, working on costumes, designing scenery and working on the set…

“La Cité des femmes", the next section, investigates Fellini’s complex relationship with the “female universe, particularly with certain emblematic actors or actresses, Masina, Fellini, Mastroianni and Ekberg"

Finally, the vast question of self-representation is treated in the fourth section, “Biographical Invention”. It is largely devoted to the famous “Book of Dreams” that paints a fascinating portrait of Fellinian mythology.

The exhibition brings together a number of photographers close to Fellini who were with him on his various projects. Their reportages provide a backstage view of his work. They include Gidion Bachmann, Deborah Beer, Ampelio Ciolfi, Osvaldo Civarini, Michangelo Durazzo, Pierluigi, GB Poletto, Paul Ronald and Tazio Secchiaroli. But also Paul Ronald’s color pictures from 81⁄2, or Deborah Beer’s unpublished work on La Cité des Femmes, Ginger and Fred and La Nave Va.

In the exhibition, screens and projections feature excerpts and selected scenes from Fellini’s work, as well as unreleased clips from or about his work. This was specifically designed to provoke a conversation between still and moving images.

The exhibition also presents drawings Fellini was asked to make between 1960 and 1990 by his Jungian psychoanalyst Ernest Bernhard to describe his dreams. These documents allow spectators to discover the director’s fantasies and anxieties. They are exceptional documents, some unpublished, that can be read like preparatory studies for his movies.

Finally, the exhibition demonstrates the influence magazines had on building the Fellinian myth. But it also shows their other major role for the filmmaker who often derived his inspiration from them. The magazines on display from the 1950’s and 1960’s (L’Espresso, Tempo, Domenica del Corriere), clearly identify the sources of Fellini’s inspiration.

The Grand Parade exhibit is organized in cooperation with the Fellini Foundation of Rimini, the Fellini Foundation for Cinema of Sion, the Swiss Cinémathèque and the Cinémathèque of Bologna. After Lausanne, it will travel to Canada, Spain, and Brazil.

It is an essential element of the “Tutto Fellini” season in Switzerland that includes the projection of the entirety of his works at the Swiss Cinémathèque as well as an exhibition featuring color pictures from the movie 8 ½ to inaugurate the Fellini Foundation of Sion’s new exhibition space “La maison du Diable”. An exhibition catalog is also available.

A double DVD entitled Fellini at Work includes 7 movies and several previously unreleased documentaries explaining the man and his universe.

Bernard Perrine
bernard.perrine1@orange.fr

Exhibition
Fellini, the Great parade

Through August 28, 2011

Musée de l’Élysée
18, avenue de l’Élysée
CH-1006 Lausanne
Suisse
Mardi-dimanche 10-18h
Fermé le lundi sauf les jours fériés
+41 21 316 99 11

Catalogue, Sam Stourdzé. Éditions Anabet, 232 pages

DVD
Fellini au travail
Édité par Carlotta-Films
Double Dvd 180 mn