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
Federico Fellini alcoholism. Savaged by critics at the 16th Venice International Film Festival, the film did miserably at the box office and did not receive international distribution until 1964. During the autumn, Fellini researched and developed a treatment based on a film adaptation of Mario Tobino’s novel, "The Free Women of Magliano". Located in a mental institution for women, financial backers considered the subject had no potential and the project was abandoned. While preparing "Nights of Cabiria" in spring 1956, Fellini learned of his father’s death by cardiac arrest at the age of sixty-two. Produced by Dino De Laurentiis and starring Giulietta