Tuesday, August 08, 2006

Federico Fellini Festival ...in Forth Worth TEXAS????

The  ANNOTICO Report

A Fellini Festival in Forth Worth Texas????? That boggles my mind. The Ultimate of Incongruities!!!!!!!

Infinite Passion: Fellini Film Lover's Wish Comes True

Lone Star Iconoclast                                                                                                                                         

By Nathan Diebenow, Associate Editor 

Monday, August 07, 2006

Tutto Fellini Coming To Cowtown

Interview with Don Young,
Fellini Memorabilia Collector

FORT WORTH Don Young says he feels like a fish out of water in Fort Worth, but this feeling has been all the more reason he wanted to bring a film festival devoted entirely to his favorite director, the late Federico Fellini, to his hometown.

"Fellini is the opposite of Fort Worth," Young told the Iconoclast in a recent interview. "By bringing Fellini here, Im exposing myself in a sense and putting something totally different and fairly radical here that has nothing to do with cowboy culture."

Young acknowledges that Fort Worth has its own fine arts community, corporate though it is, yet his goal is to use that stage to feed new ideas to his "conservative cowtown" neighbors.

"While Im doing it for love, Im hoping to make Fort Worth more than what it is now," he said. "Im just making my little contribution to raising the awareness level to this town, so that it will ripple into other things like political awareness and involvement, and environmental awareness and activism, even though Fellini films themselves dont address those topics necessarily."

Young has a lot of love for the great Italian filmmaker so much in fact that his collection of "Felliniana," aka Fellini memorabilia, is unrivaled. Some of his 5,000 vintage Fellini movie posters will be on display at the Fort Worth Community Art Center Gallery from now until Aug. 31.

"I collect the posters because I love the movies. I appreciate what Fellini did. Hes still very contemporary. Hes probably considered the most original filmmaker ever. In addition to that, he managed to win a bunch of Oscars the most Oscars of any director in the world," the glass art business owner explained.

In conjunction with Youngs show is Tutto Fellini, a retrospective of Fellinis 24 films, running from Aug. 18 - Sept. 3 at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth. Young says that the festival will celebrate the work of the four-time Academy Award winner with a film each day, lectures by guest speakers and film critics, and live music from Orchestra Nostalgico.

The Iconoclasts Associate Editor Nathan Diebenow caught up with Young at his home in Fort Worth to discuss his interest in Fellini, the struggle to bring these films to Texas, and the importance of experiencing other cultures and points of view..........

ICONOCLAST: How did your fascination with Fellini start?

YOUNG: Well, I was about 19 years old when some of my hippie buddies said, "Hey, were going to the movies to see Fellini, man. Lets go. Hes a cool guy. You gotta check him out." This was back in the drug days of the 60s. In fact the TCU (Texas Christian University) Theater here in Fort Worth was showing Juliet of the Spirits which was from 65, and it was like we were seeing it in 69 there in the theater. We walk in the door and marijuana smoke filling the place.

ICONOCLAST: (laughs) This is Fort Worth?

YOUNG: Things have changed a lot. Its very conservative now. You wouldnt see that, of course, but in those days, it was different, so Fellini appealed to not just the hippies, but he was speaking their language. When I say "hippies," I mean the counterculture. You know, people who were seeing things a little different with or without drugs. Fellinis movies were trippy, so to speak, in addition to being very, very deep, good movies. You could watch them on many levels.

Anyway, thats how I ended up in the theater seeing this movie, which happened to be Fellinis first color movie and the trippiest Fellini-esque movie that he had made. It was much different than anything before it. It was fun. It was way over my head. I didnt get the movie at all, but the visuals were real psychedelic and colorful and drew you in.

ICONOCLAST: Were you an art student at that time or was this poster collection just a hobby you picked up along the way?

YOUNG: I was kind of in between high school and college when I saw it. I started collecting posters really only about 12 years ago, but I already had the collecting gene in my system because I collected Marvel comics as a kid. I read them and kept them religiously. My dad raised me to collect coins, so I already had the collecting bug.

But really with Fellini, he was so popular world wide literally every country in the world liked Fellini. His films showed in Pakistan, Russia, and all over Europe and places where directors might only show in two or three places, especially in those days. As a results of that, every country had their own poster design which was a little different, their own view of the movie, so to speak. It wasnt regimented as it is now with the studios sending them the posters.

Im in an art related business the art glass business and I have been since I was 25, so I appreciated the posters, and just started collecting them. I wouldnt say its an obsession. Well, it is an obsession (laughs) when youve got 5,000 of them.

ICONOCLAST: (laughs)

YOUNG: But its not just about having the posters because I really appreciate the films. In other words, Im not a complete-ist. Like with a lot of collections, people want the entire set. Thats sort of impossible with Fellini posters because theres so many. I dont even know if anyone knows what the whole set is. Some of these sell for $50,000 a piece, so its impossible for me at this point anyway to have them all.

ICONOCLAST: What was the first one you bought?

YOUNG: Amarcord (1973) was the first poster I bought, and then I didnt buy any for a long time. This was before eBay, so when I wanted to buy posters, I had to send off for catalogs. They send them out in black and white, and you have to pick the best ones, and sometimes, there were just the name of the film.

I have other memorabilia, too. I collect old books and magazines from Europe. I like to read about Fellini because not only did he make really good films, he was a great talker. He was a great thinker. He was a philosopher basically. A lot of his stuff is hard to come by, his interviews especially. He did a lot of interviews. He never said "no" to an interview, so I have a huge collection of magazines from the 40s to today. I have a book collection of several hundred volumes on Fellini in about 12 languages. I know Fellini pretty well. Its a fascination bordering on obsession.

ICONOCLAST: What was his favorite color?

YOUNG: Im not that obsessed.

ICONOCLAST: (laughs) Weve found your limit. Well, what strikes you the most about his life and work?

YOUNG: Its really an appreciation. The films are it. He made so many good ones, but Fellini was different from all the rest that came before him. The more he matured you could see it more and more. As he matured, more people tried to copy him, but hes one of those guys who is so original that you really cant copy him, even though people tried. You know, some people come along, and they are so original and so unique that to copy them is ridiculous. It just cant be done.

He had this humanistic sweet side of him, but he also had a very cutting side that exposed what was going on in the world at the time from a very personal level inside your own head to the society at large, and he did it in some really unusual ways. But what a lot of people identify with Fellini is the images. He managed to create images on film that well, theres an adjective now called Felliniesque that refers to something strange, weird, bizarre, a mixing of fantasy and reality. He was kind of the first guy to do that. Its not that uncommon nowadays, but no one did it quite like Fellini did with these particular images. When you saw his films, you know it was a Fellini film. You didnt mistaken it for a Rossellini, an Antonioni, or the other guys. Fellini stood out quite a bit.

ICONOCLAST: Youre pretty much the fulcrum for this film festival. How did you get it off the ground?

YOUNG: Ive been working for 10 years to get this project going. I wanted to see all these films. I had heard about this thing called Tutto Fellini, which had played in foreign countries, New York, and Los Angeles. Tutto Fellini means "everything Fellini," so its all 24 of his films that had been restored right after Fellini died in 1993.

I wanted them so bad. I wanted a Fellini festival. You know, I had been having Fellini parties once a year at my house here and have people come, dress up, drink wine, watch a movie, and celebrate Fellini. I thought that we had to do this bigger and better, so I started contacting different organizations for a place to screen them on 35 mm, and I realized that it was going to take a major institution.

I approached the modern art museum about five years ago. The first time I contacted them, they kind of went, "Well, maybe, maybe not." And then last year, they said, "Yeah, lets do the Fellinifest." It was like they woke up one day and decided to focus on it because Fellini still has a modern sensibility, and the Modern Art Museum in Fort Worth is one of the cutting edge institutions in the world actually. They came through for me. They wanted to be a part of it. They felt Fellini fit in with their scene in there.

They helped me by contacting the right people in Italy. It actually took years to find out who to contact, to see who actually has these films, and they made us jump through all kinds of hoops to get the films here. Of course, you have to pay to rent them, and you need state-of-the-art equipment to show them.

ICONOCLAST: Where did these films come from exactly?

YOUNG: These 24 films are coming directly from the film vault in Italy, which is government owned. Its called "Cinecitta International" The films have been resorted to pristine, beautiful prints. You can rent a Fellini film on 35 mm, but its not a restored print.

It was a real struggle get it to Fort Worth. The films have never been shown outside of LA, Chicago, New York, and foreign countries. We beat Austin. We beat Dallas. We beat Houston. We beat them all. We got it right here in Cowtown. My obsession paid off. Im not sure well have an audience for it, but well see in a couple of weeks.

Houston, by the way, is a part of this, and the Houston Museum of Fine Arts is going to also show all the films, so I sent posters to Houston, and I have posters at the modern art museum, and I have another very large exhibition in this arts neighborhood here near the Modern. I have enough posters to fill up several museums.

As part of his Tutto Fellini film retrospective, I just happened to have all these posters, so were having the Tutto Felliniana exhibition which means "all Fellini posters." "Felliniana" means "Fellini memorabilia" basically.

ICONOCLAST: So this is a really big deal. This is the first Fellini exhibition in the Midwest even.

YOUNG: I think so. Ive been trying to get the word out that this is unique. Fellini is still pretty high on the screen. You know, Ive learned to appreciate Fellini, so Ive shared what Ive learned. He still has a lot of influence on popular culture. In fact, I have an email newsletter I put out quarterly thats called Fellini News Update, that is about Fellinis influence on popular culture.

ICONOCLAST: Give me some examples. I know of only one, which is the term "paparazzi" was coined after the name of one of his characters.

YOUNG: Yeah, like from La Dolce Vita. Theres a half a dozen words that were coined from Fellini films. La Dolce Vita was meant with dripping irony, by the way. When Fellini said "the sweet life," it was very ironic because it was really a corrupt society he was talking about.

A lot of filmmakers still emulate Fellini big time. More than ever. In fact, Woody Allen is practically a Fellini clone.

A good example is just recently the largest beer company in the world is basing their new international campaign on Fellinis La Dolce Vita. Theyre using a famous scene in that movie where the actress Anita Eckberg is kissing this actor in this famous fountain in Italy called the Trevi Fountain. In fact, theyre spending $50 million to do it.

Every shoe company in the world seems like they want a Fellini shoe nowadays.

ICONOCLAST: (laughs) Its a world-wide brand.

YOUNG: There you go. Here in this part of the country, though, thats what makes this festival unique. I even mention it to people who grew up here in the 60s, and they go, "Ive never heard of the guy." Especially in this part of Texas, hes pretty much an unknown, so Ive had a real uphill battle trying to educate people and say, "Youre an intelligent person. Youre interested in the arts. Youre interested in the world. Youre really missing out on this. Catch up. Take a look at these films and see." I envy them because now they can start over.

ICONOCLAST: (laughs) Well, Ive read recently that Americans are getting more isolationist because of the "war on terror," the conflict between Israel and Lebanon, and whatnot, and so it would seem that a film festival such as this one is an opportunity to expand peoples awareness of culture outside of our own.

YOUNG: Theyre not just pushing away things internationally. Theyre pushing away gays, blacks, Jews, everybody. This seems to be getting more conservative, especially here in Fort Worth. Were in the most conservative city in the most conservative state in the whole world right here.

And also not just isolationist but dumber. Fellini was the kind of director that was very popular. He was in Life magazine and the common everyday magazines back then in the 50s and 60s. He kept growing, but America kept getting dumber and dumber to where you mention Fellini now, and they dont know anything about him. To me thats a sign that people and society in general are dumbing down. They cant put out enough effort to understand what a complex artist is up to. They got to go watch Roseanne reruns or Friends reruns or whatever is on TV these days. I also see it among friends of mine. They cant watch it all the way through. They either fall asleep or they have to work a little too hard.

Ive found in my life that things that are easy are rarely worth the effort. Things that are good, you have to work at. You know, the best places to go camping are hard to get to. That kind of attitude is just like Fellini. You have to put out a little bit, but the rewards are huge, and it enriches you as a person when you take the time to do that. But its hard to get the message through to the people because they are getting so many counter messages from the media, that all it matters is how you look or whats the latest iPod or whats the latest song.

People are becoming more homogenized, instead of beautiful diversity that I recognized in the 60s and 70s. People were intelligent and interested in things, and nowadays, especially in Fort Worth, with a few notable exceptions, you dont see that. You see the average person as interested in what theyre supposed to be doing rather than what they want to do.

I just went to Austin, and its like the 60s just started down there, but its been that way for a long time. When I say "60s," Im not necessarily referring to drugs and rock & roll. Im talking about the consciousness and awareness and the wanting to learn new things and live life to the fullest. I dont know. Im just really disgusted with this Fort Worth area north central Texas.

For example, environmental issues dont seem to matter around here, like they do in Austin. Ive been fighting for a year to get people to wake up and see that the developers, the gas drillers, the elected officials are taking the city away from us. Whats good about this place is disappearing fast real fast. But theres just real entrenched apathy here, so the developers thrive.

We dont even have a tree ordinance in this town, which is incredible. They just clear cut hundreds of acres all the time and put in the same cookie cutter, ticky-tacky houses, as they used to call them. This used to be a beautiful native prairie here. Theres very little of it left. Ive tried to wake up people and preserve as much of that as we can. Theres a few others out there doing it, but by and large, most people dont give a flip.

That has nothing to do with anything with Fellini, but Fellini is an inspiration of mine, a hero of mine. Edward Abby is a big hero of mine. Are you familiar with Ed Abby?

ICONOCLAST: No, but he sounds familiar.

YOUNG: Hes considered the godfather of the environmental movement in the United States. He wrote a book called the Monkeywrench Gang back in the 60s. He wrote another one called Desert Solitaire. They are considered the gold standards of how the environmental movement started in the United States. He was the guy who set it in motion.

So all my heros influenced me, and Fellini is definitely one of them, and if you see a few of his films, you could see why, although he is not an environmentalist or overtly political. But if you know where to look, theyre just full of political and philosophical messages that people need to be listening to.

INFO
Don Young Felliniana Archive
www.felliniana.com

The Modern
www.themodern.org

MFA Houston
www.mfah.org/films

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Annotico Email: annotico@earthlink.net