Federico Fellini Leopardi. Fellini improvised as he filmed, using as a guide a rough treatment written with Pinelli. Despite its modest critical and commercial success in Italy, and its warm reception by French critics, it failed to interest North American distributors. Fellini won the "Praemium Imperiale", the equivalent of the Nobel Prize in the visual arts, awarded by the Japan Art Association in 1990. In July 1991 and April 1992, Fellini worked in close collaboration with Canadian filmmaker Damian Pettigrew to establish "the longest and most detailed conversations ever recorded on film". Described as the "Maestro's spiritual testament” by his biographer Tullio
Fellini: I'm a Born Liar come up with was the national snack, maple syrup served on snow. "Fellini looked at me in stupefaction. 'Thees is not possible,' he said. 'It is food for mooses and beears.'" Calvino rescued Pettigrew by repeating a thematic connection the latter had made between Elias Canetti's book "Crowds and Power" and Fellini's political parable, "Prova d'orchestra" (1979). Fellini was duly surprised, admitting to Pettigrew that Canetti's work had indeed been a conscious influence. Pettigrew then turned the conversation to film. They were dining in Fellini's private office beside the soundstages at Cinecittà where he was finishing "And the Ship Sails