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Hemingway's famous lecture on writing at Harvard strongly resembles Federico Fellini's view on acting and Michelangelo Antonioni's on directing. Hemingway opened his discourse with a pointed question: How many in this room want to write? Let's have a show of hands. All hands went up. After a long pause Hemingway asked: So, what are you doing here? Why aren't you at your desk writing? The point is that an actor learns best by acting. The guidance of a film author who has chosen actors based on identified skills and aptitude makes real progress possible in a short time.
Maestro
Vidali is currently writing a book about acting called
Fellini and the Revealing Art of Movie
Acting. During the next 12 months Maestro Vidali will develop a few acting/speaking talents into dynamic personalities. If you have a burning desire to become an accomplished acting talent with a fascinating personality that will be heard and will influence people, call while there is still time before Maestro moves to Rome for the production of his movie on Federico Fellini. At the summit of 21st Century film industry, two Italian directors stand unsurpassed among the few great film makers of the post WWII period: Federico Fellini and Michelangelo Antonioni. Fellini has become part of the international language, and it is said that "what Shakespeare is to the theater, Fellini is to cinema.” Antonioni’s fame for greatness is such that prestigious universities, such as UC Berkeley, offer classes in Antonioni cinema. Fellini and Antonioni possessed different styles and philosophies, yet each reached beyond the limits suggested by the title "director." Both were true "film authors." They wrote, designed sets and costumes, selected music, controlled special effects, created new actors from chosen inexperienced people, and molded and directed established actors to fit perfectly into the visual universes produced in their cinematic work.
Motion picture acting diverges from theater acting in many ways due to the extraordinary flexibility of the medium. At the summit of 21st Century film two Italian directors stand unsurpassed among the few great film makers of the post WWII period: Federico Fellini and Michelangelo Antonioni. Each possessed differing styles and philosophies, yet each reached beyond the limits suggested by the title "director." Both were in fact "film authors." They wrote, designed sets and costumes, selected music, controlled special effects, from inexperienced people created and trained new actors, and molded and directed established actors to fit perfectly into the visual universes produced with each cinematic work.
Fellini
was a magician with a deep metaphysical sense of reality which he has
expressed in every film with elaborate symbology. In the excerpts
from a 1990 interview, three years before he died, the
Master speaks on life, art, and Carlos Castañeda. To glimpse
Fellini's mind is to glimpse the edge between two universes: a man profoundly
simple and sincerely searching for Reality without pretenses. A unique
Master.
In L'Avventura, Special Jury Prize, Cannes, 1960, after five features in 10 years, Antonioni's style achieved a maturity that redefined our traditional views of cinematic time and space. Yet the plot is a simple one. Claudia, Anna (Claudia's wealthy girl friend), and Sandro (Anna's lover) go on a Mediterranean cruise, but Anna mysteriously disappears. Claudia and Sandro go in search of her and become lovers along the way. Anna is less forgotten, perhaps, than displaced by the mystery of the island, the composition of horizon and sea, the compulsive beauty of the rocks and the waves. Searching for one thing, they find another. Not only have the characters encountered other things in losing Anna, but the film has also encountered other interests. Using a rather traditional story line, Antonioni's originality lies precisely in his de-emphasis of the dramatic potential of film plot. Fed up with the systematic arrangement of cinematic materials, Antonioni instead develops the problems, complications, and resolutions through the psychological conflict that arises between well-defined figures and makes uses of the story's internal rhythms to tie the cinema to the truth rather than to logic. Outstanding, too, is his ability to portray modern neurotic, alienated, and guilt ridden characters. Antonioni made a film in China, Chung Kuo Cina, during the Cultural Revolution in 1972. He had been invited to make the film by the Chinese authorities. The film is nearly four hours long and was made for Italian State Television (RAI). The Chinese authorities hated the film. Antonioni was vilified. A propaganda campaign was launched against him and his film. One billion Chinese were asked to denounce a film they had not seen and a man they had never heard of. The film is beautiful. The Chinese authorities wanted a film which glorified the Revolution, a film full of certainties. Antonioni gave them instead a film of immense affection, care, and attention, but one as a result at odds with the official, the sure, the conventional, and the false. In doing so, the film suggested a politics of art based on openness, on looking, on wondering, on respect for the specific, the particular, the individual. It was a journey in search of what was hidden and interior in China, not its political public face, but its human one. Such a film was unbearable to those in power. In January 2004 students of the Fellini-Antonioni Acting Studio took part in a dramatization called THE ONE and why the liars would silence him. This film can be ordered at http://www.uneco.org or viewed online at Archive.org. [Read Santa Cruz Sentinel feature story about this production.] Any person
who sincerely desires to achieve professional acting ability must be
willing to dedicate 3 hours a week for 10 weeks on individualized training,
and supplement the training with 6 or more hours of homework. Total cost of this training: $5,000. If are interested in joining a once in a lifetime 30-day cinema adventure in Rome, Italy, where your will participate, before and behind the camera in filming the story of Federico Fellini, please call Maestro Vidali now at 831-454-9191 to schedule a telephone interview. Maestro
Aldo Vidali |
