Posters for Fellini began in 2020 as an international invitational design project dedicated to the great Italian film maker Federico Fellini. It launched on his 100th birthday with participation from 126 designers and illustrators worldwide. The project was conceived, curated and executed by Cedomir Kostovic and Iwona Rypeść-Kostović, and is finally being published by the duo as a printed book, six years after the anniversary but never to late. Below is an adaptation of a foreword I wrote for the collection.
Had it not been for COVID-19, the year 2020 might have been remembered as the 100th birthday of the visionary cinematic artist Federico Fellini (1920–1993). He personified the visual storyteller, the transformer of dreams into fantastical realities.
You are possibly thinking: This is another outpouring of posters at a time when the world and its inhabitants’ lives are in the balance? Sure, designers in every corner of the globe are trying to caution and admonish, but why not also try to enliven and enlighten, entertain and excite, celebrate genius?
When I became aware of Frederico Fellini’s films during my late teens, I was a neophyte book-a-zine designer for Evergreen Review. We were publishing a story on his 1970 film Clowns. It was not, I later learned, his best movie, but it was an experience. Every Fellini project was an experience—from his heart-rending dramas to his farcical autobiographies to his neo-realist commentaries. My favorite is Amarcord, a self-portrait of sorts Fellini’s youth, living in the historic sea city of Rimini during the 1930s period of Fascist Italy, filled with unforgettably surreal and hyper-real beautiful and bizarre characters, many with marvelously sculpted faces. Juliet of the Spirits rates high too, as do La Strada, 8 ½, Roma and even Satyricon, among his more debauchedly satiric-erotics.
Before filmmaking, Fellini was an illustrator and cartoonist. Every frame of his films was storyboarded. Do illustrators make the best filmmakers? Maybe. Fellini claims that honor. In any case, although I cannot say for certain, I’m pretty sure Fellini would be happy on his 100th (and 106th) birthday to see so many illustrators and designers paying tribute to him in this special way.
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