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 celebrated Catholic teachings, whereas others were critical or ridiculed church dogma. While Fellini was for the most part indifferent to politics, he had a general dislike of authoritarian institutions, and is interpreted by Bondanella as believing in "the dignity and even the nobility of the individual human being". In a 1966 interview, he stated, "I make it a point to see if certain ideologies or political attitudes threaten the private freedom of the individual. But for the rest, I am not prepared nor do I plan to become interested in politics." Despite various famous Italian actors favouring the Communists, Fellini