ANSA) - Paris, October 22 - The French capital is paying tribute to Italian cinema legend Federico Fellini with a series of initiatives marking the 50th anniversary of ‘La Dolce Vita’. Three months of events are planned, including exhibitions, conferences, debates, a DVD collection and a film fair. The centrepiece of the celebrations is an exhibition entitled ‘Fellini: La Grande Parade’ at the Jeu de Paume which brings together over 400 items. Film reel, photographs, set stills, posters, magazine covers, sketches and caricatures commemorate the life and work of the director. Explaining the layout of the exhibit, its curator Sam Stourdze said the aim was to explore Fellini’s passions. ”It follows neither the chronology nor the filmography of the Italian filmmaker,” he said. ”Instead it maps out his obsessions, first and foremost women, as well as drawing on sources that fired his imagination.

”It looks at his explorations of an extravagant and grotesque universe of parades, circuses, advertising and dreams”.

Stourdze said the exhibition was particularly interested in the filmmaker’s vision of the 20th century. ”Fellini described it as the century of cinema, the press, television and advertising. For him, it was the century of a society of images or, more precisely, the manufacture of those images”. The exhibit spans all the films he worked on both as scriptwriter and director, with images from his early Roberto Rossellini collaborations, including ‘Rome, Open City’ (1945) and ‘Paisan’ (1946).

It touches on ‘La Strada’ (1954), for which he won his first of eight Oscars and ‘8 1/2′ (1963), a turning point for Fellini and his first foray into the dream world that would characterize many of his later works. Fellini’s most renowned movie, ‘La Dolce Vita’ (1960), receives attention throughout the exhibition. An immense poster advertising the film opens the show, which includes various photographs from the set. There are a series of images of the movie’s stars Anita Ekberg and Marcello Mastroianni, including a colour version of their famous kiss, while another snap shows Fellini eating a bowl of spaghetti between filming. One particularly interesting link to the film is a series of original newspaper clippings by leading Italian publications recalling the scandal that surrounded ‘La Dolce Vita’ when it went on general release. Condemned by the Church as blasphemous and decadent, the film drew crowds of filmgoers and endless news headlines. The exhibition runs until January 17, after which it will transfer to Bologna’s Museum of Modern Art. Timed to coincide with the exhibition, the Italian Culture Institute is hosting a series of conferences and debates, with participants including professionals close to Fellini, such as Claudia Cardinale, Anouk Aimee and Dante Ferretti. In addition, the Cinematheque Francaise has two months of Fellini screenings planned, while a special edition double DVD is also scheduled for release, with five Fellini classics and previously unseen footage.