THE FELLINI MUSEUM is now open in Rimini

The #fellinimuseum, a brand-new concept diffused museum is opening in #rimini. This is the largest museum project dedicated to the genius of #federicofellini. The museum opened for a special long weekend inauguration: Thursday 19 August 2021 for the opening ceremony and show, starting at 20:30, and Friday 20, Saturday 21, and Sunday 22 August 2021, with free guided visits open to the public from 10:00 until midnight (already sold out). Members of the public who have a Green Pass, can enter Castel Sismondo from Monday 23 August (opening times and tickets available from the website #fellinimuseum.it).

The #fellinimuseum has been included by the Ministry for Culture in its large-scale national cultural heritage projects. It is a magical place that brings the arts together: a space that creates emotions and performance, where innovation, research, and experimentation, compare with the classicism of art.

The #fellinimuseum is not an attempt to interpret Fellini’s films as single performances, as memorials or tributes; its work is to enhance the cultural heritage of one of history’s most important filmmakers, who was born in #rimini in 1920. The #fellinimuseum is a #film museum that focuses mainly on the art and work of the great director, with more than five hours of #film clips, put together in an immersive, participatory exhibition, where the visitor is the protagonist of their visit. The audio-visual repertoire is unique, set out along a path, following the creative flow of Fellini’s works. 

There is also an important document section with original set designs, costumes by Danilo Donati, objects and photos, and notebooks that belonged to Nino Rota. But the #fellinimuseum is also a “museum that comes out of the museum”, operating on different levels and exceeding its own spaces; it fires the imagination and in a single conceptual and spatial whole with Piazza Malatesta, creating a composite path where the narrations create a participatory immersive and diffused museum. The ‘dialogue’ between interior and exterior spaces that is a characteristic of the #fellinimuseum is a seamless one, where creativity and imagination bring their positive contamination to #rimini, looking at past and future, as a key to the world where “everything is imagined”.

The project is part of a broader programme to renew infrastructure and to make the most of the cultural and architectural heritage of the city and its historic centre, which has seen other important projects completed, such as the restoration of the Teatro Galli, and the PART – Art Palaces of #rimini, it is part of a plan to make the most of the city, redesigning its image and its future.
Considering the complex nature of its division across three sites, with different time periods for organisation and completion - Castel Sismondo, Palazzo del Fulgor and Piazza Malatesta - the inauguration of the Museum does not focus on or end in a single event. From Monday 23 August, Castel Sismondo and the Ala di Isotta, which is hosting the exhibition “The World of Tonino Guerra”, will be open to the public, as is Piazza Malatesta, where the layout is almost completed. Palazzo del 
Fulgor – where those visitors who have been able to book will see the work in progress this inauguration weekend, will be closing again afterwards so that the last stage of the works can be completed.

THE FELLINI MUSEUM

If the only true realist is the visionary, then #federicofellini deserves to be shown through a realistic vision of his ideal and material heritage that he was able to share with the world. The project to dedicate a museum to the director comes, in fact, from the intention of restoring and interpreting his work as a key to connect tradition and contemporaneity, showcasing the beauty that comes from his ideas and art, a source of inspiration and diffused wealth.

The #fellinimuseum is spread out along three key points in the city centre of #rimini, connecting different points with a single vocation to transmit the knowledge and creative spark of the great Italian filmmaker. The three sites are: Castel Sismondo, a 15th-century castle designed in part by Filippo Brunelleschi; Palazzo del Fulgor, an 18th-century building, home, on its ground floor, to the Fulgor, legendary #cinema immortalised in Amarcord and now arranged with the sets designed by three-time Oscar winner, Dante Ferretti; and Piazza Malatesta, a large urban location with green sections, areas for performances and art installations, an immense sheet of water to re-evoke the castle moat and a large circular bench that, like the one in the final scenes of 8½, aims to be a tribute to life, to solidarity, and to the desire to be together.

The Museum that the city of #rimini dedicates to its genius is set in a magical place that sums up his artistry, blending into the urban fabric and following in the spirit of Fellini’s films: stupor, imagination and fun. A space that creates emotions and entertainment, where innovation, research and experimentation are at home with the classical forms of art.
For #rimini, the #fellinimuseum has the same role and central importance as the Guggenheim Museum has for Bilbao. It is a driver of culture and art, activating a regeneration process for the whole city, leveraging the attraction of art as a universal language and beauty as a “public asset”, moving it towards the creation of a new form of development for the whole community. The ‘dialogue’ between interior and exterior spaces, between the museum and the city, constructed by the #fellinimuseum is a seamless one, a hub for the area’s relaunch, where creativity and imagination bring their positive contamination to #rimini and its path through the present and into the future. In the name and in the aura of #federicofellini.

The #fellinimuseum is a visionary location that will continue to evolve, where research, a ceaseless contribution from art and artists, combine with innovation and technology to enhance Fellini’s poetic heritage. A Museum that does not intend to interpret Fellini’s #cinema as a finished work to pay homage to, but rather as a key to “everything is imagined”. This is what Fellini used to say, and this is the key to the dispersed museum.

The Municipal Authority of #rimini appointed Studio Azzurro for the artistic direction and creation of the immersive multimedia project, with a strong participation value for the visitor; while architect Orazio Carpenzano and Studio Tommaso Pallaria carried out the architectural project and the fitting out of Castel Sismondo and Palazzo del Fulgor. Both are part of the group of companies represented by Lumière & Co., winners of the international competition. The #fellinimuseum is curated by Marco Bertozzi and Anna Villari.

The #fellinimuseum has been created with the participation of almost all of the producers of Fellini's films and the current owners of the rights to royalties: RTI – Gruppo Mediaset, Titanus, Pea Films Inc., Cristaldi #film, Rai #cinema, Istituto Luce / Cinecittà, Gaumont, Lyric Productions, Compagnia Leone Cinematografica, as well as thanks to the involvement of the main national audiovisual archives: RAI Teche in the historic archive of Istituto Luce, the Fondation Fellini pour le Cinèma of Sion, the Associazione Tonino Guerra, Barilla historic archive, the Archivio nazionale del #cinema di impresa, photographic archive of the Fondazione Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia, the Fondazione Cineteca di Bologna, Cinemazero di Pordenone, Reporters Associati & Archivi, Associazione Culturale Mimmo Cattarinich, and Archivio Maraldi.

All visual identity and graphics of the #fellinimuseum are by Studio FM, Milan.

Project partners, under the patronage of the RAI, are: Visit Romagna and APT Servizi EmiliaRomagna with Hera Servizi as Gold sponsor.