Federico Fellini, an exhibition at the Carthage Film Festival, Tunis

Di  Vanessa Tomassini  - 6 november, French Fries Magazine.

On the occasion of the Carthage Film Days (JCC 2022), one hundred years after the birth of the timeless master of Italian cinema, Federico Fellini, his "Book of Dreams" lives again in an exhibition in Tunis. The initiative entitled 'Fellini realizer of dreams' is hosted at the City of Culture in Tunis with the support of the Italian Cultural Institute. The exhibition is part of the Italian participation in the Carthage Film Days, presents a retrospective of the most iconic Fellini films, from La Strada (1954) to Rome (1972), from Amarcord (1973) to Prova d'Orchestra (1978) and others, in collaboration with the Cinémathèque Tunisienne. The dream book is a diary in which Fellini - on the advice of the Jungian psychoanalyst Ernst Bernhard - reported his dreams in the form of drawings and notes. Every morning, Fellini got used to recording the dreams of the previous night in his diary through drawings or, as he called them, "scuff marks, hasty and ungrammatical notes". 

Figures and characters appear in the opera, circumstances and inspiring themes of his movies, in addition to phrases, dialogues, comments and captions. A selection of reproductions from the Book of Dreams is exhibited in Tunis, a work purchased by the Fellini Foundation in 2006, donated to the Municipality of Rimini in 2015 and currently on display at the Museum of the City of Rimini. The Book of Dreams consists of two volumes containing over 400 sheets, and the sketches on display in Tunis deal with recurring themes of Fellini's cinematic creativity like eros, travel, history, power, cinema, fashion, art, literature and religion. The influence of Fellini's art has made the great Italian director a cultural heritage of humanity. Visionary, also thanks to psychoanalysis and dreams, he forever revolutionized the seventh art. As his niece Francesca Fabbri Fellini, who inherited not only the name from Federico, but also the stardust of Cinecittà Cinema 5, says. “Federico Fellini was a special uncle. He was coming to Rimini on January 20, for his birthday, but bringing gifts for me. Once, he arrived with a beautiful blue cape and a pair of red boots. I wear them and we went for a very long walk. He used to tell me very beautiful things like mantras: remember we have two lives, those with open eyes and those with closed eyes. Remember that dreams are very important, perhaps even more than what we see with open eyes. I only understood that when I grow up, especially the sentence that is the ending of my short film, a little film as my uncle ‘Chicco’ would have called it. But a very successful little movie, because it starts in animation and part in live action. It is therefore a silent film for everyone, for an audience from 0 to 100 years old. It speaks with emotions, which wanted to thank Federico Fellini for all the beauty he instilled in us visionaries.” Francesca tells us on the sidelines of the screening of the animated short film at the Carthage Days.

Italy participates in the 33rd edition of Carthage Film Days (JCC), from 29 October to 5 November, in Tunisia, with a selection of seven films, three originals by Federico Fellini, "Amarcord", "The voice of the moon", "Eight and a Half," and 4 on his work. Francesca Fabbri Fellini, grandson of the director, with "La Fellinette," and Maestro Mario Mariani, pianist and composer originally from the Marche, with his extraordinary concert "The Fellini variations" were the focus of a special created by the Italian-Tunisian director Habib Mestiri. A theme that of dreams and psychoanalysis that accompanied Fellini throughout his life, from moments of crisis to great successes.Maestro Mario Mariani plays the piano, an instrument which is believed to know everything. He works a lot on the strings, using objects inside the piano to radically modify the sound and transforming the piano into a circus orchestra. In Tunis, Maestro Mariani presented a music program dedicated to Fellini, 'Fellini variations'. The great director intended humanity as a circus with these funny, almost tragicomic characters. The triptych 'The Fellini Variations' is part of an album 'The Soundtrack Variations' dedicated to the relationship between great composers and directors such as Nino Rota and Fellini, Danny Elfman and Tim Burton, Bernard Herrmann and Alfred Hitchcock, Mario Mariani and Vittorio Moroni.

Italian cinema at the Carthage Days therefore shines with a new understanding and awareness, that of being an extraordinary means of communication, in a world in constant evolution and tormented by wars, pandemics and renewed social tensions. Thus, cultural diplomacy, of which the Italian Cultural Institutes are a beacon across the world, supports art, the genius of Italian artists, as a means of communication that helps peoples to communicate and unite. A spirit imbued with the entire special 'The world according to Fellini' at the film festival in Carthage. "Underlining and celebrating the modernity and originality of one of the most illustrious Mediterranean directors and his influence on contemporary cinema", the new director of the Festival Sonia Chemki said, managing to please international critics with a renewed edition of the Tunisian film festival through a feminine and futuristic sensibility.

The JCC 2022 program foresees the projection of 599 films from 72 countries - 23 African, 17 Arab in addition to 32 international participations. Godmother of this edition is Saudi Arabia, tributes will be dedicated to the late Tunisian artist Hichem Rostom and to the director Kalthoum Bornaz as well as Yamina Bachir Chouikh (Algeria), Mohamed Abderrahman Tazi (Morocco), Naky Sy Savané (Ivory Coast) and Daoud Abdel Sayed (Egypt). Female directors have been at the center of "Focus Spain" and "Focus Palestine". The opening film is a Moroccan feature movie, "Fatema, la sultane inoubliable" by Abderrahim Tazi, in homage to the writer and activist Fatema Mernissi.There are 24 feature films for the official competition among the best recent Arab and African productions, the main section of the festival, including 12 fiction and 12 documentaries and 8 cine-documentaries. Tunisia is represented by 8 films, with 2 films per section. For the second consecutive year, the JCC presents four Tunisian short stories, produced with the support of the National Center for Film and Image (CNCI). Among the usual sections of the festival, Cinemas of the World, Horizons of Tunisian Cinema with 26 new films, Ciné Avenue (6 films) screened in Avenue Bourguiba, JCC in Prisons (7 films) and JCC in Barracks (7 films). The Carthage Film Days represent the Oscars of the Arab world. Since its creation in 1966, the JCCs have offered visibility to African and Arab films, opening up to world cinema in the last few years.