Peter Sellers, or: how I learned to stop worrying and love short films. Thirty years after his unexpected death, on July 24, 1980, when he was just 55 years old, the 18th edition of ARCIPELAGO – International Festival of Short Films and New Images, at the Intrastevere Multiscreen in Rome from June 18 to 24, will celebrate the popular British actor. It will be a “short” homage to an unrivalled master of comedy with his many characters – from Doctor Strangelove to The Pink Panther and The Party. The most attended Italian festival of short films will actually present some works as absolute Italian premieres.

One of the last stages of the Peter Sellers' long transition from a brilliant career as a radio impersonator to his extraordinary film adventure, was a 1959 short film, The Running Jumping and Standing Still Film, co-directed with his friend Richard Lester: a "home movie" shot with a small 16mm camera owned by Sellers himself, during two Sundays at the cost of 70 pounds. Conceived just to have fun with some friends, it turned out to be an Academy Award nominee for the Best Short Film, and then - a few years later - brought Lester to be called by the Beatles for their first film, the famous A Hard Day's Night, and later also Help!.

Never screened in Italy, The Running Jumping and Standing Still Film - a sort of slapstick comedy inspired by early cinema - will be presented at ARCIPELAGO in 35mm, in the Outsiders - Famous Filmmakers' Short Films section, together with two other absolute rarities, Italian premieres as well: the medium-length films - both dated 1951 - Let's Go Crazy by Allan Cullimore, where the to-be "Inspector Jacques Clouseau" appears in many hilarious roles (among them, Groucho Marx!), and Penny Points To Paradise by Tony Young. These two films were reportedly missing for decades, but in 2006 Kate Lees, granddaughter of producer Arthur Dent, found the two films in the cellar and in 2009 the British Film Institute completed the restoration. At ARCIPELAGO we will see Let's Go Crazy, recently restored, while Penny Points To Paradise will be presented in a shorter 55 minutes version (the original film was 77) which was re-edited in 1960 for the foreign market, mainly Australia and New Zealand. This print, which is the only existent one, is preserved at the National Film and Sound Archive in Canberra, Australia.

The tribute to Sellers is completed by a documentary which contextualizes his prestigious but stormy career, the 1969 The World of Peter Sellers. This is the only portrait - at times even intimate, and maybe for this reason it was banned by BBC - which the actor said it really understood him. The director Tony Palmer is actually one of the best and most active British documentary filmmakers specialized in biographies. He directed - among many titles - 200 Motels, the cult film on legendary rockstar Frank Zappa.