Rimini (Italy) (AFP)

The Italian city of Rimini (northeast) began Monday to celebrate the centenary of one of his illustrious children, the filmmaker Federico Fellini, whose fantastic and surrealist universe has marked the history of Seventh Art.

The director, who revolutionized cinema with his dreamlike universe, his melancholy and his vivid imagination, thanks to unforgettable films like "La Strada" (1954), "Les nuits de Cabiria" (1957), "La dolce vita" ( 1960), who died in Rome in 1993, would have been a hundred years old on Monday.

A century after his birth, his hometown of Rimini, on the Adriatic Sea, where he was born on January 20, 1920, is preparing a very special gift for him: a museum entirely dedicated to the master, in which poetry and technology will mix.

The city which surely inspired one of his masterpieces, Amarcord (1973), portrait of deep Italy at the height of fascism, wants the museum to be "a dream place", like the wrote the daily Il Fatto Quotidiano, because of the sets and visionary installations of his films.

"The dream effect will be guaranteed," said Rimini Mayor Andrea Gnassi a month ago when he presented the project for the Federico Fellini International Museum, which will be inaugurated in December 2020.

The homage to Fellini, which will last all year round, also includes an exhibition in a medieval castle called "Fellini 100. Immortal genius", which started in December, as well as concerts throughout the historic center of the city.

After Rimini, the exhibition, which will last until March, will be traveling and will travel first to Rome, then to Los Angeles, Moscow, Berlin, Sao Paulo, Saint Petersburg, Toronto, Buenos Aires, Tirana.

For the great collective celebration dedicated to the winner of five Oscars, the Golden Lion in Venice and the Palme d'Or in Cannes, the castle exhibition presents snapshots of Fellini, films, souvenirs, music, documents, costumes, some of which are on display for the first time.

The tribute includes a series of concerts with a symphony orchestra, the famous music of Nino Rota and the soundtracks of his films.

- Fellini ... Roma -

Rome, the city with which the master had a special relationship and in which he lived a good part of his life, could not be absent from this tribute, with a selection of images from the Experimental Center of Cinematography and with the exhibition " Federico Fellini. Ironic, mocking and centenary ", scheduled from January 20 to February 28 at the Angelica library in Rome.

To describe this exuberant universe, made up of imagination, erotic dreams, nostalgia, a sense of humor and grotesque, which can be summed up today by the adjective "fellinian", several cycles of films, events, television programs and screenings of a good part of his films were organized.

The famous Roman studios of Cinecittà, and in particular the legendary Teatro 5, the studio where he shot almost all his films, including "E la nave va" ("Et vogue le bateau"), 1983) and "Ginger and Fred" (1986), with Giulietta Masina and Marcello Mastroianni, will celebrate the master with an installation by his friend and collaborator Dante Ferretti, called "Book of Dreams".

From Milan to Rabat, from Bogota to Rio de Janeiro, screenings and retrospectives were organized to celebrate, each in their own way, the anniversary of one of the Italian geniuses.

"We are all children of" Eight and a half "(Oscar for best foreign film in 1964) said filmmaker Woody Allen a few years ago, evoking the creative genius of one of the most important artists of the twentieth century who will have influenced directors as diverse as Pedro Almodóvar, Peter Greenaway or Emir Kusturica.

© 2020 AFP