Starting on January 24^th, 2009, just days after the announcement of the 2008 Academy Award nominations, and during the month leading up to the highly anticipated Oscar ceremony, one hundred drawings from Federico Fellini’s Book of Dreams  will be on display at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences headquarters in Los Angeles (inauguration on January 23^rd , from 7 to 9 p.m.). In this prestigious setting, the American public will enjoy the opportunity of seeing, for the first time, the original copy of Fellini’s Book of Dreams, an essential document for the reconstruction of the world of the master filmmaker’s imagination. Fellini’s drawings were exhibited to the public for the first time in Rome in October 2007, on the occasion of the second edition of the International Rome Film Festival. The exhibition later travelled to the filmmaker’s native Rimini as well as Padua.

The exhibition ‘Fellini Oniricon – Fellini’s Book of Dreams’, curated by Tullio Kezich and Vittorio Boarini, is co-produced by the Fondazione Cinema per Roma and the Fondazione Federico Fellini, in collaboration with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in Los Angeles. It is also supported by ANSA, the Cineteca (Film Archives) of Bologna, Reporters Associati, and the lawyer Gianluigi Rossi. It will run from January 24^th to April 19^th, 2009, at the Academy of Motion Pictures headquarters in Los Angeles. Free admission.

The exhibition is divided into eight sections: Hellish Nights, imbued with the director’s awareness of danger and sense of anguish over the phenomenon of genocide; Amarcord: Rimini and Family, in which images of Fellini’s native city and family, inspiration for much of his work, come to the surface; Giulietta, the symbol of the eternal feminine in Fellini’s mind, and starting point for his investigation into the female psyche; All These Ladies, the mature seductress, curvaceous blondes, and sensual brunettes, whose nocturnal appearances in Fellini’s dreams only fuelled his erotic obsessions, guilt complexes, and deepest longings, serving in any case as sources of delight that dispelled his negative thoughts; The Celebrities, ranging from Picasso to Welles, from Jung to Dalì and Borges; Dreaming and Filming, in which dreams are revealed to be the most authentic and personal aspect of Fellini’s work as a director; and Alter Egos, Friends and Rivals, in which Fellini’s dreams fondly capture the Mastroianni brothers – Marcello, the actor, and Fellini’s alter ego, and his brother Ruggero, Fellini’s trusted film editor; Nino Rota, and even Pier Paolo Pasolini. This last section also includes a collection of twelve original drawings taken from The Book of Dreams, which Fellini gave to his friends as presents.

Alongside the drawings, also on view is a fascinating selection of stills that retraces the extraordinary artistic career and human adventure of this master of the silver screen. The photographs were provided by the photo archives of ANSA, the Cineteca of Bologna, and Reporters Associati.

Fellini’s Book of Dreamsis a diary that Federico Fellini kept faithfully from 1960 until August 1990. Here the great director committed his nocturnal dreams and nightmares to paper in the form of drawings and, as he himself called them, ‘hurried scribbles and jottings with bad grammar.’ The diary is composed of two ledgers of different sizes (the first, the smaller one, measuring 35 x 26 cm, the second 49 x 35), in which, Fellini, urged by the Junghian psychoanalyst Ernst Bernhard, jotted down and illustrated his own nocturnal fantasies over the space of thirty years. The first volume (approximately 245 pages) includes the drawings that go from November 30^th, 1960, to August 2^nd, 1968; the second (154 pages) goes from February 1973 until the end of 1982, supplemented by scattered pages and notes from 1990. The Fondazione Federico Fellini was able to acquire the filmmaker’s diaries thanks to a contribution from Italy’s Emilia Romagna region.

Fellini’s Book of Dreamswas published in Italy by Rizzoli in 2007, in two versions, one being a valuable anastatic facsimile (only 1,000 numbered copies printed), which reproduces Fellini’s two diaries in their original dimensions. The edition is accompanied by an essay by Tullio Kezich, Fellini’s official biographer, and a recollection by a close friend of Fellini’s, Vincenzo Mollica, as well as an introduction by the director of the Fondazione Federico Fellini, Vittorio Boarini, who relates the odyssey the Foundation undertook to purchase the book. The drawings are accompanied by the unabridged transcription of Fellini’s handwritten texts as well as an index of the personalities who appear in the drawings and are mentioned by the artist.

Fellini’s Book of Dreamshas also appeared in France, published by Flammarion; in Germany, by the Collection Rolf Heine; and in America, by Rizzoli International.

‘Fellini draws and captions the stuff of his dreams; with no false modesty, he bares himself to a single reader, who is none other than Fellini himself,’ Tullio Kezich explains. ‘In reality, in these 400 pages themes from his films, ideas for films, and figures and events from 20^th-century Italy are all interwoven. Fellini’s Book of Dreams proposes to navigate that world called the Mystery, an extraordinary storehouse of objects, surreal hypotheses, impossible fantasies, and flashes of precognition. It is a privilege to be granted an intimate look at the inner world of such a great artist.’