Infinite Passion: Fellini Film Lover’s Wish Comes True — Tutto Fellini Coming To Cowtown

Interview with Don Young,
Fellini Memorabilia Collector

FORT WORTH Don Young says he feels like a fish out of water in Fort Worth, but this feeling has been all the more reason he wanted to bring a film festival devoted entirely to his favorite director, the late Federico Fellini, to his hometown.

“Fellini is the opposite of Fort Worth,” Young told the Iconoclast in a recent interview. “By bringing Fellini here, I’m exposing myself in a sense and putting something totally different and fairly radical here that has nothing to do with cowboy culture.”

Young acknowledges that Fort Worth has its own fine arts community, corporate though it is, yet his goal is to use that stage to feed new ideas to his “conservative cowtown” neighbors.

“While I’m doing it for love, I’m hoping to make Fort Worth more than what it is now,” he said. “I’m just making my little contribution to raising the awareness level to this town, so that it will ripple into other things like political awareness and involvement, and environmental awareness and activism, even though Fellini films themselves don’t address those topics necessarily.”

Young has a lot of love for the great Italian filmmaker so much in fact that his collection of “Felliniana,” aka Fellini memorabilia, is unrivaled. Some of his 5,000 vintage Fellini movie posters will be on display at the Fort Worth Community Art Center Gallery from now until Aug. 31.

“I collect the posters because I love the movies. I appreciate what Fellini did. He’s still very contemporary. He’s probably considered the most original filmmaker ever. In addition to that, he managed to win a bunch of Oscars the most Oscars of any director in the world,” the glass art business owner explained.

In conjunction with Young’s show is Tutto Fellini, a retrospective of Fellini’s 24 films, running from Aug. 18 – Sept. 3 at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth. Young says that the festival will celebrate the work of the four-time Academy Award winner with a film each day, lectures by guest speakers and film critics, and live music from Orchestra Nostalgico.

The Iconoclast’s Associate Editor Nathan Diebenow caught up with Young at his home in Fort Worth to discuss his interest in Fellini, the struggle to bring these films to Texas, and the importance of experiencing other cultures and points of view.

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ICONOCLAST: How did your fascination with Fellini start?

YOUNG: Well, I was about 19 years old when some of my hippie buddies said, “Hey, we’re going to the movies to see Fellini, man. Let’s go. He’s a cool guy. You gotta check him out.” This was back in the drug days of the 60s. In fact the TCU (Texas Christian University) Theater here in Fort Worth was showing Juliet of the Spirits which was from ’65, and it was like we were seeing it in ’69 there in the theater. We walk in the