8½ in 35mm
[OTTO E MEZZO]
One of the greatest films about film ever made, Federico Fellini’s 8½ turns one man’s artistic crisis into a grand epic of the cinema. Marcello Mastroianni plays Guido Anselmi, a director whose new project is collapsing around him, along with his life. An early working title for 8½ was THE BEAUTIFUL CONFUSION, and Fellini’s masterpiece is exactly that: a shimmering dream, a circus and a magic act. The film also stars Bruno Agostini, Sandra Milo, Anouk Aimée, Barbara Steele, Caterina Boratto and Claudia Cardinale. DIR/SCR Federico Fellini; SCR Ennio Flaiano, Tullio Pinelli, Brunello Rondi; PROD Angelo Rizzoli. Italy/France, 1963, b&w, 138 min. In Italian with English subtitles. NOT RATED
This 35mm print was struck from the original camera negative at L'Immagine Ritrovato in Bologna, Italy, and subtitled at TITRAFILM in Paris, one of the world’s few surviving 35mm subtitling facilities. The print was created entirely photochemically, with no intermediary digital source or restoration. Lasers were used to etch the subtitles directly into the film emulsion, the only subtitling method possible for photochemically-created prints.
Programming Note:
Some of the laser-etched titles will occasionally be partly or completely washed out against white backgrounds, making about 15% of the text unreadable or partly readable. Some extended passages of dialogue are affected. “White on white,” unavoidable and common in 35mm prints, once plagued black-and-white foreign language films. The problem has largely disappeared since the rise of digital projection. Despite this issue, we feel this is an extremely rare opportunity to experience Fellini’s extraordinary imagery in a newly-struck first generation 35mm print.
Run Time: 138 Minutes
Opening Date: Saturday, August 16, 2025
Genre: Drama
35mm Film
