Italian Cinema Forum: Fellini's 8½

Join the third workshop of the Italian Cinema Forum, presented by Dr Mark Nicholls in a discussion of 8½ (Federico Fellini, 1963).

Selected clips from the movie will be shown as a basis for discussion. For a more engaging conversation, watch the full movie beforehand.

Starring Marcello Mastroianni and Claudia Cardinale as potent expressions of their director’s Carl Jung influenced ego, 8½ is Fellini’s rich, mysterious and, above all, personal take on Italian filmmaking practice as he found it at the end of the 1950s.

Guido (Mastroianni) resides at a popular spa town while trying to make his next film. Chaos is the order of business but somewhere within all the industry mayhem Guido finds space to reflect on his experience, from childhood to the carnival of married life. With the help of the real-life and fantastical spirits he encounters on set and off, the show doesn’t go on but the performance finds satisfaction in a great circle of personal reconciliation.