Survivals of Rome in Federico Fellini

Abstract

This paper proposes to apply the concept of survival developed in the iconology of Aby Warburg to the cinema dedicated to Rome in Federico Fellini's filmography. To achieve this purpose, the films Block-notes di un regista (1969), Satyricon (1969) and Roma (1972) are analyzed. According to this reading, these films are constantly traversed, and even inhabited, by survivals, which reach Fellini’s Rome from the legends of the city, from its history and its cinema, and even from the personal Roman experiences of the director himself. Two central questions make up the axes around which this approach is developed: firstly, how do survivals manifest themselves and what role do they play in Fellini’s films? And, secondly, do we witness the appearance of a new paradigm in relation to the inertia of the images or does Fellini’s work reveal a continuity, worth to be inscribed in the surviving images of Warburg?