Filmmaker Focus: Federico Fellini’s La Strada (1954) + Post Film Discussion
Filmed in Italy - where it happened!
Federico Fellini
With this breakthrough film, Federico Fellini launched both himself and his wife and collaborator Giulietta Masina to international stardom, breaking with the neorealism of his early career in favor of a personal, poetic vision of life as a bittersweet carnival. The infinitely expressive Masina registers both childlike wonder and heartbreaking despair as Gelsomina, loyal companion to the traveling strongman Zampanò (Anthony Quinn, in a toweringly physical performance), whose callousness and brutality gradually wear down her gentle spirit. Winner of the very first Academy Award for Best Foreign-Language Film, La strada possesses the purity and timeless resonance of a fable and remains one of cinema’s most exquisitely moving visions of humanity struggling to survive in the face of life’s cruelties. This screening and presentation provided in partnership with the Italian American Heritage Society.
5:00 pm: Join us for a free Happy Hour at at the cinema bar from 5:00pm to 6:00pm
6:00pm: Pre screening lecture hosted by film scholar Kate Burney
6:15: Film Screening
8:15pm: Post Screening discussion hosted by Kate Burney