Fellini's 8 1/2
Federico Fellini’s film, 8 1/2 has been hailed as one of the all-time best anti- realist films, but to really understand why, one must first answer this: what are realism and anti-realism? Are they genres of film, or are they philosophies in general? Is anti-realism a response to realism, or a completely separate idea? Realism is defined in the dictionary as “The representation in art or literature of objects, actions, or social conditions as they actually are, without idealization or presentation in abstract form.” In other words, the medium of which the art is created must be transparent. Realism in film, therefore, is very hard to achieve. One may even say that there is no way to achieve true realism in film. One of the most realistic types of film would be of the Dogma category, where the director is bound by a set of rules keeping the film as real as possible.