“Now I will tell you, after all”, says Fellini to Gideon Bachmann before starting this priceless interview. Previously unseen and probably the last of his significant interviews, it is also the most accurate and the longest, and was given by Fellini on video in the final years of his life. It began almost 30 years before, in 1956… A heavy snowfall blankets New York. Federico Fellini is in the car, stuck in traffic. He’s in town for the American premiere of La strada. With him sits Bachmann, creator with Jonas Mekas of ‘underground’ screenings in NY from the beginning of the 1950s. Bachmann is also a journalist, for both print and radio, the latter took him to host a show about movies, broadcast throughout the United States. While the journalist presses him, Fellini quips, probably as a stalling tactic: “Gideon, why don’t you come to Rome, and we continue the interview?”. It was the start of a long friendship, of Bachmann’s life in Rome, of a sometimes combative relationship that would last until Fellini’s death. Bachmann dedicated two very special documentaries to the maestro from Rimini: Fellinikon and Ciao, Federico! The interview was always put off for one reason or another. It wasn’t until 1985 that Fellini finally sat down to Bachmann’s questions in a long interview in front of the camera. After almost 30 years of friendship, Fellini seems to feel the urgent need to confide, to open up. Face to face with Bachmann, Fellini’s voice sounds like it is at the end of a long journey… His art, his way of creating, what films mean to him: there is the story of all his films in this long, heartfelt and engaging conversation.

Riccardo Costantini