La Strada, La Dolce Vita, 8½, Roma—these are just a few of the films that won Federico Fellini his very own word in the Oxford English Dictionary: “Felliniesque.” It means “fantastic, bizarre; lavish, extravagant.” Fellini was born in 1920 in Rimini, the coastal Italian town where beaches and nightlife converge. Before he became a director, Fellini worked as a caricaturist at the town’s Fulgor cinema, drawing portraits of Hollywood stars in exchange for movie tickets. In 1939, he moved to Rome to work on the editorial staff at a satirical magazine. It was only after W.W. II that he abandoned comics and found his way into the movie business. He kept drawing, using pencil work to invent characters and scenes. With film stills, on-set recordings, and film clips, this exhibition demonstrates how Fellini’s drawings informed his filmmaking. —E.C.