Today we’re doing a show; really, really unique. I’m excited about this one. I’ve called it spirits and filmmaking. It’s unusual. I’m going to just backtrack a minute because when I was in college, I fell in love with the films of Italian filmmaker, Federico Fellini, and he was influenced by the new realist movement but he came up with his own unique style, and his films are like dreams or hallucinations against an ordinary backdrop. And I believe what I really like best about his work is that he asks questions and he doesn’t answer them. I mean, I fell in love with foreign films at that point; we’re not being forced to feed anything. We’re actually being treated as intelligent human beings. I actually really wish we had more of that.

And so I think at the time I was watching La Dolce Vita, that was the first one; The Sweet Life. And it was made in the 1960s. I tried to watch it last night. I couldn’t find it, but it’s really worth watching and I could watch, and what we can in the United States watch, is 8 1/2, which earned Fellini an Oscar for Best Foreign Film. And I really love this one. It’s about Fellini’s life. He’s portrayed by an actor, and he’s entangled in this. I don’t know if it’s a creative paralysis or a nervous breakdown, so something’s going on. But he’s in this car and he’s obviously struggling and then he’s floating off, and he’s got his feet against the car window and these strange people were like looking at him, and he winds up floating through the car. And I just thought it was this amazing metaphor for those times in our life where you just feel that things aren’t working, and somehow there’s some intelligence that invites us into this next level. And again, he’s asking a question; what’s reality?

And then I also watched Juliet of the Spirits, about a housewife who’s haunted by the supernatural. This is really super. And so while Fellini seems to be great at portraying the role of the male in increasingly feminist society, he also challenges us to artistic creativity in the nature of reality. And then last night I watched La Strada, which means the path or the road. And here he really understands the plight of the feminine too, and especially in that era, I think it was made in 1957, who really depended on her beauty propeller, or thought she did. And this internal and external battle of love and sex. It begins with this woman almost drowning in a river, and her lover pushes her in and I just think it’s shocking and has grit, and it makes us question what love truly is. So again, it just invites us into this deep inquiry into the nature of what it is to be human.

My guest today, this is exciting. My guest today is a really fascinating woman. Her name is Anselma Dell’Olio. She was a founding member of NOW. Yes, we are going to get into that. That’s going to be fabulous. And she’s a filmmaker and she’s done an amazing film about Fellini and his work, and I can’t wait to hear more about it. Her recent documentary is called Fellini of the Spirits, and it’s been released in Italy. We hope it’s going to be available here. You can just check it out online, see if you can get a link to it, but it’s an intimate exploration of Fellini’s lifelong interest in spirituality, and the esoteric, union philosophy. And so anyway, I’m going to take a short break here and when we come back on, I’m going to introduce Anselma Dell’Olio and we’re going to discuss spirits and filmmaking. Exciting. So stay tuned, we’ll be right back.