The great Italian director Federico Fellini was in the midst of production on Satyricon—his self-described “sci-fi” film that looked back at the pre-Christian Romans as if they were Martians—when he shot Fellini: A Director’s Notebook, a light-hearted quasi-documentary “introducing” himself to Americans for NBC.

It’s a testament to the times that such a thing could have been broadcast on an American network television. And it’s “a Fellini” in every way, so the project was, shall we say, already quite extraordinary to begin with. That it burst into millions of American homes for one night in 1969, as easily accessed as running water… well, wow. That takes it to a whole other level.

Fellini: A Director’s Notebook features his wife Giulietta Masina, actress Caterina Boratto, composer Nino Rota and Marcello Mastroianni (we even get a look at Mastroianni’s home). We seeing him working on the set. There are also appearances by Genius the Medium, some very Fellini-esque hippies and a variety of whimsical and eccentric characters who come into the director’s office wanting to audition for him. Fellini descends into the subways, goes to a slaughterhouse and visits the Appian Way, all the while discussing his creative search for atmosphere and the bizarre.

As with all of Fellini’s films, this boasts some of the most extraordinary faces—the faces, as he says of “real Romans”—that you’ll ever see. The master’s eye was so attuned to the smallest detail in his films, but it’s Fellini’s faces that are unique in all of cinema. Every face in this film is a work of art.