Political Fellini

Federico Fellini is often considered a disengaged filmmaker, interested in self-referential dreams and grotesquerie rather than contemporary politics. This book challenges that myth by examining the filmmakers reception in Italy, and by exploring his films in the context of significant political debates. By conceiving Fellinis cinema as an individual expression of the nations mythical biography, the directors most celebrated themes and images a nostalgia for childhood, unattainable female figures, fantasy, the circus, carnival become symbols of Italys traumatic modernity and perpetual adolescence.