Federico Fellini is one of the most celebrated non-Americans in the history of the Oscars, his life’s work capped in 1993 with a career honorary Academy Award.

Eight times he was nominated for best screenplay, starting in 1946 and 1949 when he co-wrote scripts for two Roberto Rossellini movies and continuing on films he directed, from “I Vitelloni” (1953) to “Casanova” (1976).

Four times he was among the best-director nominees, for “La Dolce Vita” (1961), “8½” (1963), “Satyricon” (1970) and “Amarcord” (1975).

Four times his movies won best foreign-language film: “La Strada” (1955), “Nights of Cabiria” (1958), “8½” and “Amarcord.”

Thanks to Film Streams, Omaha’s nonprofit arthouse movie theater at 14th and Mike Fahey Streets, area film buffs have a chance to see all the Fellini titles listed above and more on the big screen over the next 11 weeks.

The Fellini retrospective, which begins Friday and runs through June 16, is part of Film Streams’ repertory series saluting great directors.

He also won top prizes from Cannes, the Venice, Berlin and Moscow Film Festivals, the Directors Guild of America, the National Board of Review, the Golden Globes and more.

So imagine my surprise when I found this quote from Orson Welles in David Thomson’s “Biographical Dictionary of Film”: “His films are a small-town boy’s dream of the big city. His sophistication works because it’s the creation of someone who doesn’t have it. But he shows dangerous signs of being a superlative artist with little to say.”

Or this, in Andrew Sarris’ St. James Film Directors Encyclopedia: “Federico Fellini is one of the most controversial figures in the history of Italian cinema. Though his successes have been spectacular, ... his failures have been equally flamboyant. This has caused considerable doubt in some quarters as to the validity of his ranking as a major force in contemporary cinema.”

Really? Other notable film directors who have cited Fellini as an influence on their work include Woody Allen, Pedro Almodovar, Tim Burton, Terry Gilliam, David Lynch, Martin Scorsese, Ingmar Bergman, Bernardo Bertolucci, Werner Fassbinder and Stanley Kubrick.

He is among the most intensely autobiographical film directors. Though no single movie tells the story of his life, nearly all of them reference specific elements of it, exploring his complex relationships with women, his Roman Catholic upbringing, his small-town origins, his marriage, his work as a journalist, caricature artist and filmmaker, and his fascination with circus performers, Jungian psychoanalysis and his dream life. Even his LSD trips.

“Our dreams are our real life,” Fellini himself once said. “My fantasies and obsessions are not only my reality but the stuff of which my films are made.”

He began as part of the Italian neorealism movement in the 1940s. These films celebrated the working class, were filmed on location and often used nonprofessional actors. They grappled with changing post-WWII economic and moral conditions.

Fellini soon evolved his own distinct style in his film reflections on life, blending reality, fantasy and bizarre imagery into what became known as “Felliniesque.”

Another word for which we have Fellini to thank is paparazzi, from a journalist character in “La Dolce Vita” who photographs celebrities.

Fellini’s work is widely believed to have influenced the French New Wave cinema that followed his peak period.

Actors whose careers were enhanced by Fellini’s work include Marcello Mastroianni, whose characters often seem based on Fellini; and Giulietta Masina, Fellini’s wife of 50 years, who sometimes played out aspects of their life together on the screen. Fellini called her his greatest influence.

A mini-biography on IMDb.com says Fellini’s trademark is “bizarre, abstract plots peppered with risque humor.” That falls short.

Baseline’s Encyclopedia of Film quotes Fellini as saying: “If I were to make a film about the life of a soul, it would end up being about me.”

That comes closer to the personal nature of Fellini’s films.