WATCH PARTY: 8 1/2 (1963) directed by Federico Fellini @ Mary Pretlow Library

This is the favorite film of Tim Cooper, former owner of the Naro Video Store, who recently passed away. Read more about him here. (h/t cinephile Ben!) We'll be in the large room, Meeting Room 1, for one of the most highly regarded movies of all time (and one I've tried to watch a couple times, and found a bit challenging. Maybe on the big screen it'll click.)

RUNTIME: 138 minutes

SYNOPSIS (via Criterion.com): Marcello Mastroianni plays Guido Anselmi, a director whose new project is collapsing around him, along with his life. One of the greatest films about film ever made, Federico Fellini’s 8½ (Otto e mezzo) turns one man’s artistic crisis into a grand epic of the cinema. An early working title for 8½ was The Beautiful Confusion, and Fellini’s masterpiece is exactly that: a shimmering dream, a circus, and a magic act.

BLURBS:
"8 1/2 is probably the most potent movie about film-making, within which fantasy and reality are mixed without obfuscation, and there's a tough argument that belies Fellini's usual felicitous flaccidity." - Derek Malcolm, The Guardian

"In terms of execution I cannot remember a more brilliant film." - Stanley Kaufmann, The New Republic

"It's a deluxe glorification of creative crisis, visually arresting (the dark and light contrasts are extraordinary, magical) but in some essential way conventional-minded." - Pauline Kael, The New Yorker