Katyna Ranieri - La Dolce Vita

In the early days of the Net the think-tank boffins were worried serendipity would disappear. They hadn't imagined YouTube. I went looking for Miss Kittin, the Berlin strictness disco-queen, and instead found Miss Katyna, the Italian actress and singer.

It was the title 'La Dolce Vita' that caught my eye - one of the ten best films of the last sixty years and arguably its director's greatest film [Frederico Fellini]. The reward was a wonderul piece of Fifties Italian pop. It has no realtion to the film but the uploader has made the connection via images of Anita Ekberg, the film's star. So three pieces of serendipity in one go -- proof once again of YouTube's role as a cutlrural aggregator.

IMDB tells me Katyna Ranieri made a number of films in the 50s, two in the 60s - one of them as a singer in The Yellow Rolls Royce (one of the worst films of the last sixty years) - and two more in the 70s. What they don't mention are her collaborations with Nino Rota, Fellini's composer of choice. There's even an album - Chansons Pour Fellini with Nino Rota. She will be 80 on August 15th.