January 20 this year marks the centenary of the birth of the famous Italian director Federico Fellini. It is not difficult to imagine that throughout 2020, film institutions around the world will plan many commemorative events for it. European arts television channel Arte is working on a documentary called "Fellini of the Spirits," which will soon be officially launched. The film details Fellini's lifelong passion for various metaphysics, and reveals many details that were previously little known.
Documentary "Ghost Fellini"
"Ghost Fellini" is directed by an 79-year-old Italian documentary filmmaker Anselma Dell'Olio, who has won the David Award for Best Documentary for Best Documentary for the famous Italian director Marco Ferreri's documentary La Lucida follia di Marco Ferreri. Ansema Delorio herself lived in Rome, but lived in the United States as a child, so she was familiar with English. I think that when Fellini finished filming "Ginger and Fred", he wanted to find someone to do English subtitles so that he could release it in the United States, and he found Ansema Delorio, and the two formed a friendship.
1965's Ghost Juliet exemplifies Fellini's interest in metaphysics
According to Delorio, the title of this "Ghost Fellini" is taken from the film master's 1965 "Juliet of the Spirits" (also translated as "Juliet and the Devil"), which is about Fellini's obsession with various strange powers, religious beliefs, and astrological metaphysics, which is precisely a blind spot in Fellini's research in the past, and is not too familiar to later generations of scholars and fans.
According to her, Fellini's interest stemmed from his encounter with the German Ernst Bernhard (1896-1965). The latter served as an assistant to the Swiss psychology master Carl Jung, inheriting and developing Jung's analytical psychology. In 1935, in order to escape Nazi persecution, he came to live in Italy, where he eventually died. In his later years, The Psychology Clinic opened by Ernst Bernhard was frequented by a client named Federico Fellini, and the two soon became friends, a psychoanalyst who not only treated Fellini's various heart diseases, but also gave him many inspirations for filmmaking, and also made Fellini fall in love with astrology, paranormal phenomena and other occult miscellaneous.
Fellini
In preparation for The Phantom Juliet, Fellini also became acquainted with Gustav Rol (1903-1994), a prominent Figure in Italian intellectual and social circles at the time, known as a prophet and telepathic. The two soon became good friends, and under Raul's influence, Fellini became keen on various séances, trying to communicate with the undead of the dead. "In addition, he was particularly interested in China's I Ching, and I remember that in his office in the Rome Film City, there was a copy of the I Ching, and I often opened it to see it -- it was so simple to read, not necessarily to throw coins." Ansema Dellorio recalled.