Federico Fellini's (born 1920) fantasy world, which has become more dreamlike over the years, shows us the spectacle of life. Yet, paradoxically, the most surreal of Italian directors invites us to reflect on reality.

What is this reality, which contains everything that happens? Where is it? In us? Outside of us? In our memory, which turns into myth? In the real events that seem like dreams or in dreams that materialize in an immense farce wherein existence is the tragicomic appearance? Like Pirandello before him, Fellini meditates on the ease with which we cross the borders that supposedly mark the difference between reality and appearance.

As in the 1987 film Intervista [The Interview], which he made for Italian television, Fellini identifies a film director with the demiurge of a Great Spectacle. “My films are not for understanding. They are for seeing,” Fellini reminds anyone who persists in undervaluing the aim of his aesthetic orientation.

I talked about this and other things with Fellini in his Rome studio sometime after his last film, La Voce della Luna [The Voice of the Moon] (1990). Courteous, cordial, gifted with a good sense of humor, Fellini, who is mistrustful of journalists–and who loves paradox and ambiguity–kindly tried not to talk about this mistrust. “Really, we should chat about other things,” he told me.

Interview