8½ / 1963 / 2hr&18mins / Rated 15 / Subtitled

Programmed in response to Fabrica’s In Between Gallery, our contemporary photography exhibition featured in our street-facing window, currently presenting “Many Happy Days” by Duncan Poulton (December-April 2023).

Federico Fellini’s critically acclaimed and highly influential surreal comedy-drama 8½ presents the complexities involved in the creative process with intense public scrutiny. The self-referential film weaves in and out of reality as Guido Anselmi our director is failing to deliver on his new sci-film.

Duncan Poulton’s work explores the notion that contradictions, like fear and apathy, coexist and this reflection on our own existence and acceptance of our own mortality can be found in the themes of the film.

One of the greatest films about film ever made, Federico Fellini’s 8½ marks the moment when the director’s always-personal approach to filmmaking fully embraced self-reflexivity, pioneering a stream-of-consciousness style that darts exuberantly among flashbacks, dream sequences, and carnivalesque reality, and turning one man’s artistic crisis into a grand epic of the cinema. Criterion



For the film's BBFC themes and content guidance, click here.