A Journey in the Dreamlife of Postwar Italian Cinema with Artist SABINA STREETER And a Screening of Federico Fellini’s The White Sheik
Saturday, May 24, 2025 at 6pm
Sag Harbor, NY – Following the success of Tarnished Angels, its 2022 tribute to director Douglas Sirk and the Sirk-inspired art of local artist Sabina Streeter, Sag Harbor Cinema explores another film-related vein of the Munich-born painter’s work, combining a screening of Federico Fellini’s first feature film, The White Sheik, with an art exhibit on the Cinema’s third floor.
“Vacanze Romane” evolved from Streeter’s series “Tempeste di Primavera,” a group of paintings shown at MoMA PS1 in 1987, as well as in Berlin and Munich. The work is based on the popular mid-20th century phenomenon of the Italian Fotoromanzi, a genre of serialized, illustrated storytelling where the narrative is expressed through photographs enhanced with comic style word balloons. Appearing in general interest magazines, as well as in specially dedicated ones, Fotoromanzi came with catchy titles and often featured well known actors. Italian divas Sofia Loren and Gina Lollobrigida appeared in several Fotoromanzi at the beginning of their careers.
Many are stylistically inspired by the 40s and 50s Italian movie genre Telefoni Bianchi as well as the films by Vittorio de Sica, Dino Risi, and Federico Fellini. With emotional drama, humorous narratives and the optimism of postwar Italy, sometimes indulging in elegant settings while navigating love and social conflict, the films reflected a desire for escapism in contrast to the more gritty imagery of Italian neorealism.
“As a child, Fotoromanzi were a forbidden object of fascination, the adult, racier version of my Mickey Mouse comic books. I would secretly peek at the black and white pages of those magazines, full of dramatic close ups, laying around in the babysitter’s room. As wonderfully portrayed in The White Sheik, Fotoromanzi evoked a dreamlife dense with mystery, romance and adventure. I was immediately taken by the idea of collaborating with Sabina on this,” says Sag Harbor Cinema’s Artistic Director Giulia D’Agnolo Vallan.
“I first came across the Fotoromanzi magazines during my youth while working in Florence where, not speaking a word of Italian, I tried to teach myself the language with the literature of this captivating genre,” says Streeter. “I became fascinated by their dramatic, sometimes naive storytelling reenacted by mostly unknown actors, trying to evoke struggles of love and the pursuit of happiness in staged photographs.”
“I use mostly charcoal and oil in typically large format and the work consists of gestural drawings and paintings that reflect the source material, numerous screenshots of my favourite postwar Cinecitta Films. After selecting the most evocative images, in my eyes, I incorporate text, not necessarily based on the original still, but with Italian being a crucial element for maintaining authenticity,” says Streeter.
On Saturday May 24th, the screening of Federico Fellini’s first film, The White Sheik (in which a young bride traveling to Rome ditches a visit with the Pope to meet her favorite fotoromanzo star, a dashing Arab prince improbably played by pudgy Alberto Sordi) will be followed by a q&a with Sabina Streeter. Dino Risi’s Il Sorpasso – a subject of study in Streeter’s artwork – will also be part of the series.
Tickets to The White Sheik are available at the box office or sagharborcinema.org. The reception for Sabina Streeter’s “Vacanze Romane” is at 7:45pm on Saturday, May 24, 2025 on the Cinema’s third floor and is open to the public. The gallery exhibit is open to the public through June 30th.
ABOUT THE FILM
THE WHITE SHEIK
Directed by Federico Fellini
Italy (1952), 86 minutes, in Italian with English subtitles
Newlywed Wanda (Brunella Bovo), on her honeymoon in Rome with her husband Ivan (Leopoldo Trieste), slips away to meet her idol, adventure magazine character The White Sheik (Alberto Sordi). In the words of film critic J. Hoberman: “Not only the first but also in some respects the most charming, least overweening film Fellini ever made — a comic fable of mass-produced fantasy and fanatical devotion.” Co-written by Michelangelo Antonioni.
4K restoration by Fondazione Cineteca di Bologna, in collaboration with RTI-Mediaset and Infinity, as part of Fellini 100. Restored from the original camera negative. Soundtrack negative provided by Studio Cine. Restoration carried out at L’immagine Ritrovata laboratory (Bologna)
ABOUT SABINA STREETER
Sabina Streeter is a contemporary artist whose portraits are based in classical traditions and include an extraordinarily diverse range of present and historical figures.
Streeter enlarges reality, then cuts to the emotional with an unblinking clarity of detail. Her work dramatizes issues of history, popular culture, and universal longing. The freely gestural strokes are executed in charcoal, pastel, gouache and oil and result in a movement between figurative painting and abstraction.
As Alanna Heiss, founder of MoMA PS1, observes, “Sabina’s work has a unique conceptual content and an aura of cool detachment that is ironic without being jaded or exaggerated. If I had to choose one living artist to distill my likeness on canvas, it would be her.”
Sabina Streeter was born in Munich, Germany to a family of artists. She has lived and worked in Sag Harbor, New York since 1992.
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About Sag Harbor Cinema
As a not-for-profit 501(c)3, community-based organization, Sag Harbor Cinema is dedicated to presenting the past, present and future of the Movies and to preserving and educating about films, filmmaking, and the film-going experience in its three state-of-the-art theaters. The Cinema engages its audiences and the community year-round through dialogue, discovery, and appreciation of the moving image – from blockbusters to student shorts and everything in between. Revitalized and reimagined through unprecedented community efforts to rebuild the iconic Main Street structure after a fire nearly destroyed it in 2016, SHC continues a long historic tradition of entertainment in the heart of Sag Harbor Village.