Pier Paolo Pasolini
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Pier Paolo Pasolini (; 5 March 1922 – 2 November 1975) was an Italian poet, filmmaker, writer and intellectual who also distinguished himself as a journalist, novelist, translator, playwright, visual artist and actor. He is considered one of the defining public intellectuals in 20th-century Italy, influential both as an artist and a political figure. A controversial personality due to his straightforward style, Pasolini's legacy remains contentious. Openly
gay ''Gay'' is a term that primarily refers to a homosexual person or the trait of being homosexual. The term originally meant 'carefree', 'cheerful', or 'bright and showy'. While scant usage referring to male homosexuality dates to the late 1 ...
and an avowed
Marxist Marxism is a Left-wing politics, left-wing to Far-left politics, far-left method of socioeconomic analysis that uses a Materialism, materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to understand S ...
, he voiced strong criticism of
petty bourgeois ''Petite bourgeoisie'' (, literally 'small bourgeoisie'; also anglicised as petty bourgeoisie) is a French term that refers to a social class composed of semi-autonomous peasants and small-scale merchants whose politico-economic ideological ...
values and the emerging
consumerism Consumerism is a social and economic order that encourages the acquisition of goods and services in ever-increasing amounts. With the Industrial Revolution, but particularly in the 20th century, mass production led to overproduction—the supp ...
in Italy, juxtaposing socio-political polemics with a critical examination of
taboo A taboo or tabu is a social group's ban, prohibition, or avoidance of something (usually an utterance or behavior) based on the group's sense that it is excessively repulsive, sacred, or allowed only for certain persons.''Encyclopædia Britannica ...
sexual matters. A prominent protagonist of the
Roman Roman or Romans most often refers to: *Rome, the capital city of Italy *Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD *Roman people, the people of ancient Rome *''Epistle to the Romans'', shortened to ''Romans'', a letter ...
cultural scene of the post-war period, he was an established major figure in European literature and cinematic arts. Pasolini's unsolved murder at Ostia in November 1975 during an altercation with a young male prostitute prompted an outcry in Italy, and its circumstances continue to be a matter of heated debate.


Biography


Early life

Pier Paolo Pasolini was born in
Bologna Bologna (, , ; egl, label= Emilian, Bulåggna ; lat, Bononia) is the capital and largest city of the Emilia-Romagna region in Northern Italy. It is the seventh most populous city in Italy with about 400,000 inhabitants and 150 different nat ...
, traditionally one of the most politically leftist of Italy's cities. He was the son of elementary-school teacher Susanna Colussi, named after her
Polish-Jewish The history of the Jews in Poland dates back at least 1,000 years. For centuries, Poland was home to the largest and most significant Ashkenazi Jewish community in the world. Poland was a principal center of Jewish culture, because of the lon ...
great-grandmother, and Carlo Alberto Pasolini, a lieutenant in the Royal Italian Army; they had married in 1921. Pasolini was born in 1922 and named after a paternal uncle. His family moved to
Conegliano Conegliano (; Venetian: ''Conejan'') is a town and ''comune'' of the Veneto region, Italy, in the province of Treviso, about north by rail from the town of Treviso. The population of the city is of people. The remains of a 10th-century castle a ...
in 1923, then to Belluno in 1925, where their second son, Guidalberto, was born. In 1926, Pasolini's father was arrested for gambling debts. His mother moved with the children to her family's home in
Casarsa della Delizia Casarsa della Delizia, simply known as Casarsa (Standard Friulian: ; Western Friulian: ), is a ''comune'' (municipality) in the Province of Pordenone in the Italian region Friuli-Venezia Giulia, located about northwest of Trieste and about east ...
, in the
Friuli Friuli ( fur, Friûl, sl, Furlanija, german: Friaul) is an area of Northeast Italy with its own particular cultural and historical identity containing 1,000,000 Friulians. It comprises the major part of the autonomous region Friuli Venezia Giulia ...
region. That same year, his father first detained, then identified
Anteo Zamboni Italian Fascist leader Benito Mussolini survived several assassination attempts while head of government of Italy in the 1920s and 1930s. Tito Zaniboni The former Socialist deputy Tito Zaniboni was arrested for attempting to assassinate Mus ...
as the would-be assassin of Benito Mussolini following his assassination attempt. Carlo Alberto was persuaded of the virtues of fascism. Pasolini began writing poems at age seven, inspired by the natural beauty of Casarsa. One of his early influences was the work of
Arthur Rimbaud Jean Nicolas Arthur Rimbaud (, ; 20 October 1854 – 10 November 1891) was a French poet known for his transgressive and surreal themes and for his influence on modern literature and arts, prefiguring surrealism. Born in Charleville, he start ...
. His father was transferred to Idria in the
Julian March Venezia Giulia, traditionally called Julian March (Serbo-Croatian, Slovene: ''Julijska krajina'') or Julian Venetia ( it, Venezia Giulia; vec, Venesia Julia; fur, Vignesie Julie; german: Julisch Venetien) is an area of southeastern Europe wh ...
(now in Slovenia) in 1931; in 1933 they moved again to
Cremona Cremona (, also ; ; lmo, label= Cremunés, Cremùna; egl, Carmona) is a city and ''comune'' in northern Italy, situated in Lombardy, on the left bank of the Po river in the middle of the ''Pianura Padana'' ( Po Valley). It is the capital of th ...
in Lombardy, and later to
Scandiano Scandiano ( Reggiano: ) is a town and ''comune'' in Emilia-Romagna, in the northeast part of the country of Italy, near the city of Reggio nell'Emilia and the Secchia river. It had a population of 25,663 as of 31 December 2016. History The c ...
and Reggio Emilia. Pasolini found it difficult to adapt to all these dislocations, though he enlarged his poetry and literature readings (
Dostoyevsky Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky (, ; rus, Фёдор Михайлович Достоевский, Fyódor Mikháylovich Dostoyévskiy, p=ˈfʲɵdər mʲɪˈxajləvʲɪdʑ dəstɐˈjefskʲɪj, a=ru-Dostoevsky.ogg, links=yes; 11 November 18219 ...
,
Tolstoy Count Lev Nikolayevich TolstoyTolstoy pronounced his first name as , which corresponds to the romanization ''Lyov''. () (; russian: link=no, Лев Николаевич Толстой,In Tolstoy's day, his name was written as in pre-refor ...
,
Shakespeare William Shakespeare ( 26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's nation ...
,
Coleridge Samuel Taylor Coleridge (; 21 October 177225 July 1834) was an English poet, literary critic, philosopher, and theologian who, with his friend William Wordsworth, was a founder of the Romantic Movement in England and a member of the Lake ...
,
Novalis Georg Philipp Friedrich Freiherr von Hardenberg (2 May 1772 – 25 March 1801), pen name Novalis (), was a German polymath who was a writer, philosopher, poet, aristocrat and mystic. He is regarded as an idiosyncratic and influential figure of ...
) and left behind the religious fervour of his early years. In the Reggio Emilia high school, he met his first true friend, Luciano Serra. The two met again in Bologna, where Pasolini spent seven years completing high school. Here he cultivated new passions, including
football Football is a family of team sports that involve, to varying degrees, kicking a ball to score a goal. Unqualified, the word ''football'' normally means the form of football that is the most popular where the word is used. Sports commonly c ...
. With other friends, including Ermes Parini, Franco Farolfi, Elio Meli, he formed a group dedicated to literary discussions. In 1939, Pasolini graduated and entered the Literature College of the
University of Bologna The University of Bologna ( it, Alma Mater Studiorum – Università di Bologna, UNIBO) is a public research university in Bologna, Italy. Founded in 1088 by an organised guild of students (''studiorum''), it is the oldest university in continuo ...
, discovering new themes such as
philology Philology () is the study of language in oral and writing, written historical sources; it is the intersection of textual criticism, literary criticism, history, and linguistics (with especially strong ties to etymology). Philology is also defin ...
and
aesthetics Aesthetics, or esthetics, is a branch of philosophy that deals with the nature of beauty and taste, as well as the philosophy of art (its own area of philosophy that comes out of aesthetics). It examines aesthetic values, often expressed thr ...
of figurative arts. He also frequented the local cinema club. Pasolini always showed his friends a virile and strong exterior, totally hiding his interior turmoil. In his poems of this period, Pasolini started to include fragments in
Friulan Friulian ( ) or Friulan (natively or ; it, friulano; de-AT, Furlanisch; sl, furlanščina) is a Romance language belonging to the Rhaeto-Romance family, spoken in the Friuli region of northeastern Italy. Friulian has around 600,000 speaker ...
, a minority language he did not speak but learned after he had begun to write poetry in it. "I learnt it as a sort of mystic act of love, a kind of ''félibrisme'', like the Provençal poets." In 1943, he founded with fellow students the ''Academiuta della lenga furlana'' (Academy of the Friulan Language). As a young adult, Pasolini identified as an atheist.


Early poetry

In 1942, Pasolini published at his own expense a collection of poems in Friulan, ''Versi a Casarsa'', which he had written at the age of eighteen. The work was noted and appreciated by such intellectuals and critics as
Gianfranco Contini Gianfranco Contini (4 January 1912 – 1 February 1990) was an Italian academic and philologist. He studied at the Collegio Mellerio Rosmini in Domodossola, then at the University of Pavia, where he graduated in 1933. Later, he studied also ...
,
Alfonso Gatto Alfonso Gatto (17 July 1909 – 8 March 1976) was an Italian writer. Along with Giuseppe Ungaretti and Eugenio Montale, he is one of the foremost Italian poets of the 20th century and a major exponent of hermetic poetry. Biography Gatto stud ...
and Antonio Russi. Pasolini's pictures had also been well received. He was chief editor of a magazine called ''Il Setaccio'' ("The Sieve"), but was fired after conflicts with the director, who was aligned with the Fascist regime. A trip to Germany helped him also to perceive the "provincial" status of Italian culture in that period. These experiences led Pasolini to revise his opinion about the cultural politics of Fascism and to switch gradually to a
Communist Communism (from Latin la, communis, lit=common, universal, label=none) is a far-left sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology and current within the socialist movement whose goal is the establishment of a communist society, a s ...
position. Pasolini's family took shelter in Casarsa, considered a more tranquil place to wait for the conclusion of the
Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
, a decision common among Italian military families. Here he joined a group of other young enthusiasts of the Friulan language who wanted to give Casarsa Friulan a status equal to that of
Udine Udine ( , ; fur, Udin; la, Utinum) is a city and ''comune'' in north-eastern Italy, in the middle of the Friuli Venezia Giulia region, between the Adriatic Sea and the Alps (''Alpi Carniche''). Its population was 100,514 in 2012, 176,000 with t ...
, the official regional standard. From May 1944, they issued a magazine entitled ''Stroligùt di cà da l'aga''. In the meantime Casarsa suffered
Allied An alliance is a relationship among people, groups, or states that have joined together for mutual benefit or to achieve some common purpose, whether or not explicit agreement has been worked out among them. Members of an alliance are called ...
bombardments and forced enlistments by the
Italian Social Republic The Italian Social Republic ( it, Repubblica Sociale Italiana, ; RSI), known as the National Republican State of Italy ( it, Stato Nazionale Repubblicano d'Italia, SNRI) prior to December 1943 but more popularly known as the Republic of Salò ...
, as well as partisan activity. Pasolini tried to distance himself from these events. Starting in October 1943, Pasolini, his mother and other colleagues taught students unable to reach the schools in
Pordenone Pordenone (; Venetian and fur, Pordenon) is the main ''comune'' of Pordenone province of northeast Italy in the Friuli Venezia Giulia region. The name comes from Latin ''Portus Naonis'', meaning 'port on the Noncello (Latin ''Naon'') River'. ...
or Udine. This educational workshop was considered illegal and broke up in February 1944. It was here that Pasolini had his first experience of homosexual attraction to one of his students. His brother Guido, aged 19, joined the Party of Action and their Osoppo-Friuli Brigade, taking to the bush near Slovenia. On 12 February 1945, Guido was killed in an ambush planted by Italian Garibaldine partisans serving in the lines of
Josip Broz Tito Josip Broz ( sh-Cyrl, Јосип Броз, ; 7 May 1892 – 4 May 1980), commonly known as Tito (; sh-Cyrl, Тито, links=no, ), was a Yugoslav communist revolutionary and statesman, serving in various positions from 1943 until his deat ...
's
Yugoslavia Yugoslavia (; sh-Latn-Cyrl, separator=" / ", Jugoslavija, Југославија ; sl, Jugoslavija ; mk, Југославија ;; rup, Iugoslavia; hu, Jugoszlávia; rue, label=Pannonian Rusyn, Югославия, translit=Juhoslavija ...
n guerrillas. This devastated Pasolini and his mother. Six days after his brother's death, Pasolini and others founded the Friulan Language Academy (''Academiuta di lenga furlana''). Meanwhile, on account of Guido's death, Pasolini's father returned to Italy from his detention period in November 1945, settling in Casarsa. That same month, Pasolini graduated from university after completing a final thesis about the work of
Giovanni Pascoli Giovanni Placido Agostino Pascoli (; 31 December 1855 – 6 April 1912) was an Italian poet, classical scholar and an emblematic figure of Italian literature in the late nineteenth century. Alongside Gabriele D'Annunzio, he was one of the great ...
(1855–1912), an Italian poet and classical scholar. In 1946, Pasolini published a small poetry collection, ''I Diarii'' ("The Diaries"), with the Academiuta. In October he traveled to Rome. The following May he began the so-called ''Quaderni Rossi'', handwritten in old school exercise books with red covers. He completed a drama in Italian, ''Il Cappellano''. His poetry collection, ''I Pianti'' ("The cries"), was also published by the Academiuta.


Rome

In January 1950, Pasolini moved to Rome with his mother Susanna to start a new life. He was acquitted of two indecency charges in 1950 and 1952. After one year sheltered in a maternal uncle's flat next to Piazza Mattei, Pasolini and his 59-year-old mother moved to a run-down suburb called
Rebibbia Rebibbia is an urban zone of Rome, Italy. It was located on the road Via Tiburtina on the north-east edge of the city. Administratively Rebibbia is part of both Ponte Mammolo quarter of Rome and Municipio IV of Rome. The suburb, first developed ...
, next to a prison, for three years; he transferred his Friulan countryside inspiration to this Roman suburb, one of the infamous ''borgate'' where poor
proletarian The proletariat (; ) is the social class of wage-earners, those members of a society whose only possession of significant economic value is their labour power (their capacity to work). A member of such a class is a proletarian. Marxist philoso ...
immigrants lived in often-horrendous sanitary and social conditions. Instead of asking for help from other writers, Pasolini preferred to go his own way. Pasolini found a job working in the
Cinecittà Cinecittà Studios (; Italian for Cinema City Studios), is a large film studio in Rome, Italy. With an area of 400,000 square metres (99 acres), it is the largest film studio in Europe, and is considered the hub of Italian cinema. The studios we ...
film studios and sold his books in the ''bancarelle'' ("sidewalk shops") of Rome. In 1951, with the help of the Abruzzese-language poet Vittorio Clemente, he found a job as a secondary school teacher in
Ciampino Ciampino () is a city and ''comune'' in the Metropolitan City of Rome, Lazio, Italy. It was a ''frazione'' of Marino until 1974, when it became a ''comune''; it obtained the city ( it, città) status (being therefore officially known as Citt ...
, just outside the capital. He had a long commute involving two train changes, and earned a meagre salary of 27,000 lire.


Career


Writing

Pasolini's first novel, '' Ragazzi di vita'' (1955), dealt with the Roman
lumpenproletariat In Marxist theory, the ''Lumpenproletariat'' () is the underclass devoid of class consciousness. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels coined the word in the 1840s and used it to refer to the unthinking lower strata of society exploited by reactionary a ...
. The book caused obscenity charges to be filed against Pasolini, the first of many instances in which his art provoked legal problems. In 1954, Pasolini, who now worked for the literary section of Cinecittà, left his teaching job and moved to the Monteverde quarter. At this point, his cousin Graziella moved in. They also accommodated Pasolini's ailing, cirrhotic father Carlo Alberto, who died in 1958. Pasolini published ''La meglio gioventù'', his first important collection of Friulan poems. His first novel, '' Ragazzi di vita'' (English: ''Hustlers''), was published in 1955. The work had great success but was poorly received by the PCI establishment and, most importantly, by the Italian government. It initiated a lawsuit for "obscenity" against Pasolini and his editor, Garzanti. Although exonerated, Pasolini became a target of insinuations, especially in the
tabloid press Tabloid journalism is a popular style of largely sensationalism, sensationalist journalism (usually dramatized and sometimes unverifiable or even Fake news, blatantly false), which takes its name from the Tabloid (newspaper format), tabloid ne ...
. In 1955, together with Francesco Leonetti, Roberto Roversi and others, Pasolini edited and published a poetry magazine called ''Officina''. The magazine closed in 1959 after fourteen issues. That year he also published his second novel, ''Una vita violenta'', which unlike his first was embraced by the Communist cultural sphere: he subsequently wrote a column, titled ''Dialoghi con Passolini'' (meaning ''Passolini in Dialogue''), for the PCI magazine ''
Vie Nuove ''Vie Nuove'' (Italian: ''New Ways'') was a weekly popular magazine published in Rome, Italy, between 1946 and 1978. The magazine was one of the post-war publications of the Italian Communist Party which used it to attract larger sections of the ...
'' from May 1960 to September 1965, which were published in book form in 1977 as ''Le belle bandiere'' (''The Beautiful Flags''). In the late 1960s Pasolini edited an advice column in the weekly news magazine ''
Tempo In musical terminology, tempo (Italian, 'time'; plural ''tempos'', or ''tempi'' from the Italian plural) is the speed or pace of a given piece. In classical music, tempo is typically indicated with an instruction at the start of a piece (often ...
'. In 1970, Pasolini bought an old castle near
Viterbo Viterbo (; Viterbese: ; lat-med, Viterbium) is a city and ''comune'' in the Lazio region of central Italy, the capital of the province of Viterbo. It conquered and absorbed the neighboring town of Ferento (see Ferentium) in its early history. ...
, several miles north of Rome, where he began to write his last novel, ''Il Petrolio'', where he denounced obscure dealing in the highest levels of government and the corporate world ( Eni,
CIA The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian intelligence agency, foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gat ...
,
the Mafia "Mafia" is an informal term that is used to describe criminal organizations that bear a strong similarity to the original “Mafia”, the Sicilian Mafia and Italian Mafia. The central activity of such an organization would be the arbitration of d ...
, etc.). The novel-documentary was left incomplete at his death. In 1972, Pasolini started to collaborate with the extreme-left association
Lotta Continua Lotta Continua (LC; en, Continuous Struggle) was a far-left paramilitary organization in Italy. It was founded in autumn 1969 by a split in the student-worker movement of Turin, which had started militant activity at the universities and factor ...
, producing a documentary, ''12 dicembre'', concerning the
Piazza Fontana bombing The Piazza Fontana bombing ( it, Strage di Piazza Fontana) was a terrorist attack that occurred on 12 December 1969 when a bomb exploded at the headquarters of Banca Nazionale dell'Agricoltura (the National Agricultural Bank) in Piazza Fontana ...
. The following year he began a collaboration for Italy's most renowned newspaper, '' Il Corriere della Sera''. At the beginning of 1975 Garzanti published a collection of his critical essays, '' Scritti corsari'' ("Corsair Writings").


Narrative

* '' Ragazzi di vita'' (''The Ragazzi'', 1955) * ''Una vita violenta'' (''A Violent Life'', 1959) * ''Il sogno di una cosa'' (1962) * ''Amado Mio—Atti Impuri'' (1982, originally written in 1948) * ''Alì dagli occhi azzurri'' (1965) * ''Teorema'' (1968) * ''Reality'' ('' The Poets' Encyclopedia'', 1979) * ''Petrolio'' (1992, incomplete)


Poetry

* ''La meglio gioventù'' (1954) * ''Le ceneri di Gramsci'' (1957) * ''L'usignolo della chiesa cattolica'' (1958) * ''La religione del mio tempo'' (1961) * ''Poesia in forma di rosa'' (1964) * ''Trasumanar e organizzar'' (1971) * ''La nuova gioventù'' (1975) * '' Roman Poems''. Pocket Poets No. 41 (1986) * ''The Selected Poetry of Pier Paolo Pasolini: A Bilingual Edition''. (2014)


Essays

* ''Passione e ideologia'' (1960) * ''Canzoniere italiano, poesia popolare italiana'' (1960) * ''Empirismo eretico'' (1972) * ''Lettere luterane'' (1976) * ''Le belle bandiere'' (1977) * ''Descrizioni di descrizioni'' (1979) * ''Il caos'' (1979) * ''La pornografia è noiosa'' (1979) * ''Scritti corsari'' (1975) * ''Lettere (1940–1954)'' (''Letters, 1940–54'', 1986)


Theatre

* ''Orgia'' (1968) * ''Porcile'' (1968) * ''Calderón'' (1973) * ''Affabulazione'' (1977) * ''Pilade'' (1977) * ''Bestia da stile'' (1977)


Films

In 1957, together with
Sergio Citti Sergio Citti (30 May 1933 – 11 October 2005) was an Italian film director and screenwriter, born in Rome. He often worked with Pier Paolo Pasolini, but also worked for others such as Ettore Scola. His own films include '' We Free Kings'', f ...
, Pasolini collaborated on
Federico Fellini Federico Fellini (; 20 January 1920 – 31 October 1993) was an Italian film director and screenwriter known for his distinctive style, which blends fantasy and baroque images with earthiness. He is recognized as one of the greatest and most i ...
's film '' Le notti di Cabiria'', writing dialogue for the
Roman dialect Romanesco () is one of the central Italian dialects spoken in the Metropolitan City of Rome Capital, especially in the core city. It is linguistically close to Tuscan and Standard Italian, with some notable differences from these two. Rich in ...
sections. Fellini also asked him to work on dialogue for some episodes of ''
La dolce vita ''La Dolce Vita'' (; Italian for "the sweet life" or "the good life"Kezich, 203) is a 1960 satirical comedy-drama film directed and co-written (with Ennio Flaiano, Tullio Pinelli and Brunello Rondi) by Federico Fellini. The film stars Marcell ...
''. Pasolini made his debut as an actor in '' Il gobbo'' in 1960, and co-wrote ''
Long Night in 1943 ''Long Night in '43'' (Italian: La Lunga Notte del '43) is an Italian film of 1960 set in Ferrara, in the Italian Social Republic German puppet state during the late stages of the Second World War. It was directed by Florestano Vancini and adapte ...
''. Along with ''Ragazzi di vita'', he had his celebrated poem ''Le ceneri di Gramsci'' published, where Pasolini voiced tormented tensions between reason and heart, as well as the existing ideological dialectics within communism, a debate over artistic freedom,
socialist realism Socialist realism is a style of idealized realistic art that was developed in the Soviet Union and was the official style in that country between 1932 and 1988, as well as in other socialist countries after World War II. Socialist realism is ch ...
and commitment. Pasolini's first film as director and screenwriter was ''
Accattone ''Accattone'' is a 1961 Italian drama film written and directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini. Despite an original screenplay, the film is often perceived as a cinematic rendition of Pasolini's earlier novels, particularly '' Ragazzi di vita'' (''The R ...
'' in 1961, again set in Rome's marginal quarters, a story of pimps, prostitutes and thieves that contrasted with Italy's postwar economic reforms. Although Pasolini tried to distance himself from neorealism, it is considered to be a kind of second neorealism. Nick Barbaro, a critic writing in the ''
Austin Chronicle ''The Austin Chronicle'' is an alternative weekly newspaper published every Thursday in Austin, Texas, United States. The paper is distributed through free news-stands, often at local eateries or coffee houses frequented by its targeted demogr ...
'', stated it "may be the grimmest movie" he has ever seen. The film aroused controversy and scandal, with conservatives demanded stricter censorship by the government. In 1963, the episode " La ricotta", included in the
anthology film An anthology film (also known as an omnibus film, package film, or portmanteau film) is a single film consisting of several shorter films, each complete in itself and distinguished from the other, though frequently tied together by a single theme ...
''
RoGoPaG ''Ro.Go.Pa.G.'' (also known as "RoGoPaG") is a 1963 film consisting of four segments, each written and directed by a different director. These include the French director Jean-Luc Godard (segment "Il nuovo mondo") and the Italian directors Ugo ...
'', was censored and Pasolini was tried for "offense to the Italian state and religion". During this period, Pasolini frequently traveled abroad: in 1961, with
Elsa Morante Elsa Morante (; 18 August 191225 November 1985) was an Italian novelist, poet, translator and children's books author. Her novel '' La storia'' (''History'') is included in the Bokklubben World Library List of 100 Best Books of All Time. Life a ...
and
Alberto Moravia Alberto Moravia ( , ; born Alberto Pincherle ; 28 November 1907 – 26 September 1990) was an Italian novelist and journalist. His novels explored matters of modern sexuality, social alienation and existentialism. Moravia is best known for his d ...
to
India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...
(where he went again seven years later); in 1962, to
Sudan Sudan ( or ; ar, السودان, as-Sūdān, officially the Republic of the Sudan ( ar, جمهورية السودان, link=no, Jumhūriyyat as-Sūdān), is a country in Northeast Africa. It shares borders with the Central African Republic t ...
and
Kenya ) , national_anthem = "Ee Mungu Nguvu Yetu"() , image_map = , map_caption = , image_map2 = , capital = Nairobi , coordinates = , largest_city = Nairobi , ...
; in 1963, to
Ghana Ghana (; tw, Gaana, ee, Gana), officially the Republic of Ghana, is a country in West Africa. It abuts the Gulf of Guinea and the Atlantic Ocean to the south, sharing borders with Ivory Coast in the west, Burkina Faso in the north, and To ...
,
Nigeria Nigeria ( ), , ig, Naìjíríyà, yo, Nàìjíríà, pcm, Naijá , ff, Naajeeriya, kcg, Naijeriya officially the Federal Republic of Nigeria, is a country in West Africa. It is situated between the Sahel to the north and the Gulf o ...
,
Guinea Guinea ( ),, fuf, 𞤘𞤭𞤲𞤫, italic=no, Gine, wo, Gine, nqo, ߖߌ߬ߣߍ߫, bm, Gine officially the Republic of Guinea (french: République de Guinée), is a coastal country in West Africa. It borders the Atlantic Ocean to the we ...
,
Jordan Jordan ( ar, الأردن; tr. ' ), officially the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan,; tr. ' is a country in Western Asia. It is situated at the crossroads of Asia, Africa, and Europe, within the Levant region, on the East Bank of the Jordan Rive ...
and
Israel Israel (; he, יִשְׂרָאֵל, ; ar, إِسْرَائِيل, ), officially the State of Israel ( he, מְדִינַת יִשְׂרָאֵל, label=none, translit=Medīnat Yīsrāʾēl; ), is a country in Western Asia. It is situated ...
(where he shot the documentary ''Sopralluoghi in Palestina''). In 1970 he traveled again to Africa to shoot another documentary, ''Appunti per un'Orestiade africana''. Pasolini was a member of the jury at the
16th Berlin International Film Festival The 16th annual Berlin International Film Festival was held from 24 June – 5 July 1966. The Golden Bear was awarded to the British film '' Cul-de-sac'' directed by Roman Polanski. Jury The following people were announced as being on the jury ...
in 1966. In 1967, in
Venice Venice ( ; it, Venezia ; vec, Venesia or ) is a city in northeastern Italy and the capital of the Veneto Regions of Italy, region. It is built on a group of 118 small islands that are separated by canals and linked by over 400  ...
, he met and interviewed American poet
Ezra Pound Ezra Weston Loomis Pound (30 October 1885 – 1 November 1972) was an expatriate American poet and critic, a major figure in the early modernist poetry movement, and a Fascism, fascist collaborator in Italy during World War II. His works ...
.. Retrieved 22 May 2014. They discussed the Italian movement ''
neoavanguardia The Neoavanguardia ("New Vanguard") was an avant-garde Italian literary movement oriented towards radical forms of experimentation with language. Some of its most prominent members include Nanni Balestrini, Edoardo Sanguineti, Umberto Eco, Antoni ...
'' and Pasolini read some verses from the Italian translation of Pound's '' Pisan Cantos''. The late 1960s and early 1970s were the era of the so-called "
student movement Student activism or campus activism is work by students to cause political, environmental, economic, or social change. Although often focused on schools, curriculum, and educational funding, student groups have influenced greater political e ...
". Pasolini, though acknowledging the students' ideological motivations, and referring to himself as a "Catholic
Marxist Marxism is a Left-wing politics, left-wing to Far-left politics, far-left method of socioeconomic analysis that uses a Materialism, materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to understand S ...
", thought them "anthropologically middle-class" and therefore destined to fail in their attempts at revolutionary change. Regarding the
Battle of Valle Giulia The Battle of Valle Giulia (''battaglia di Valle Giulia'') is the conventional name for a clash between Italian militants (left-wing as well as right-wing) and the Italian police in Valle Giulia, Rome, on 1 March 1968. It is still frequently reme ...
, which took place in Rome in March 1968, he said that he sympathized with the police, as they were "children of the poor", while the young militants were exponents of what he called "left-wing fascism". His film that year, ''
Teorema ''Teorema'', also known as ''Theorem'' ( UK), is a 1968 Italian allegorical film written and directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini and starring Terence Stamp, Laura Betti, Silvana Mangano, Massimo Girotti and Anne Wiazemsky. Pasolini's sixth film, it ...
'', was shown at the Venice Film Festival in a hot political climate. Pasolini had proclaimed that the festival would be managed by the directors. He wrote and directed the black-and-white '' The Gospel According to Matthew'' (1964). It is based on scripture, but adapted by Pasolini, and he is credited as writer. Jesus, a barefoot peasant, is played by
Enrique Irazoqui Enrique Irazoqui (5 July 1944 – 16 September 2020) was a Spanish professor of literature, computer chess expert and actor, best known for his role as Jesus Christ in the 1964 film ''The Gospel According to St. Matthew'', directed by Pier Paolo ...
. In his 1966 film '' Uccellacci e uccellini'' (literally ''Bad Birds and Little Birds'' but translated in English as ''The Hawks and the Sparrows''), a picaresque—and at the same time mystic—fable, Pasolini hired great Italian comedian
Totò Antonio Griffo Focas Flavio Angelo Ducas Comneno Porfirogenito Gagliardi de Curtis di Bisanzio (15 February 1898 – 15 April 1967), best known by his stage name Totò (), or simply as Antonio de Curtis, and nicknamed ''il Principe della risata ...
to work with
Ninetto Davoli Giovanni "Ninetto" Davoli (born 11 October 1948) is an Italian actor who became known through his roles in several of Pier Paolo Pasolini's films. Biography Davoli was born in San Pietro a Maida, Calabria. He was discovered by poet, novelist ...
, the director's lover at the time and one of his preferred "naif" actors. It was a unique opportunity for Totò to demonstrate that he was a great dramatic actor as well. In ''
Teorema ''Teorema'', also known as ''Theorem'' ( UK), is a 1968 Italian allegorical film written and directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini and starring Terence Stamp, Laura Betti, Silvana Mangano, Massimo Girotti and Anne Wiazemsky. Pasolini's sixth film, it ...
'' (''Theorem'', 1968), starring
Terence Stamp Terence Henry Stamp (born 22 July 1938) is an English actor. Stamp is known for his sophisticated villain roles. He was named by ''Empire Magazine'' as one of the 100 Sexiest Film Stars of All Time in 1995. He has received various accolades inc ...
as a mysterious stranger, Pasolini depicted the sexual coming-apart of a
bourgeois The bourgeoisie ( , ) is a social class, equivalent to the middle or upper middle class. They are distinguished from, and traditionally contrasted with, the proletariat by their affluence, and their great cultural and financial capital. They ...
family. (Variations of this theme were later done by
François Ozon François Ozon (; born 15 November 1967) is a French film director and screenwriter. Ozon is considered one of the most important modern French filmmakers. His films are characterized by aesthetic beauty, sharp satirical humor and a free-wheeli ...
in ''
Sitcom A sitcom, a portmanteau of situation comedy, or situational comedy, is a genre of comedy centered on a fixed set of characters who mostly carry over from episode to episode. Sitcoms can be contrasted with sketch comedy, where a troupe may use ne ...
'',
Joe Swanberg Joseph Swanberg (born August 31, 1981) is an American independent film director, producer, writer, and actor. Known for micro-budget films which make extensive use of improvisation, Swanberg is considered a major figure in the mumblecore film mov ...
in '' The Zone'' and
Takashi Miike is a Japanese film director, film producer and screenwriter. He has directed over one hundred theatrical, video, and television productions since his debut in 1991. His films run through a variety of different genres, and range from violent an ...
in ''
Visitor Q is a 2001 Japanese erotic black comedy- horror film directed by Takashi Miike. It was filmed as the sixth and final part of the Love Cinema series consisting of six straight-to-video releases by independent filmmakers via a brief but exclusi ...
''). Later films centered on sex-laden folklore, such as
Boccaccio Giovanni Boccaccio (, , ; 16 June 1313 – 21 December 1375) was an Italian people, Italian writer, poet, correspondent of Petrarch, and an important Renaissance humanism, Renaissance humanist. Born in the town of Certaldo, he became so we ...
's ''
Decameron ''The Decameron'' (; it, label=Italian, Decameron or ''Decamerone'' ), subtitled ''Prince Galehaut'' (Old it, Prencipe Galeotto, links=no ) and sometimes nicknamed ''l'Umana commedia'' ("the Human comedy", as it was Boccaccio that dubbed Dan ...
'' (1971),
Chaucer Geoffrey Chaucer (; – 25 October 1400) was an English poet, author, and civil servant best known for '' The Canterbury Tales''. He has been called the "father of English literature", or, alternatively, the "father of English poetry". He w ...
's ''
The Canterbury Tales ''The Canterbury Tales'' ( enm, Tales of Caunterbury) is a collection of twenty-four stories that runs to over 17,000 lines written in Middle English by Geoffrey Chaucer between 1387 and 1400. It is widely regarded as Chaucer's ''Masterpiece, ...
'' (1972), and ''
Il fiore delle mille e una notte ''Arabian Nights'' is a 1974 Italian film directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini. Its original Italian title is ', which means ''The Flower of the One Thousand and One Nights''. The film is an adaptation of the ancient Arabic anthology ''The Book of On ...
'' (literally ''The Flower of 1001 Nights'', released in English as ''Arabian Nights'', 1974). These films are usually grouped as the ''Trilogy of Life''. While basing them on classics, Pasolini wrote the screenplays and took sole writing credit. This trilogy, prompted largely by Pasolini's attempt to show the secular sacredness of the body against man-made social controls and especially against the venal hypocrisy of religious state (indeed, the religious characters in ''The Canterbury Tales'' are shown as pious but amorally grasping fools) were an effort at representing a state of natural sexual innocence essential to the true nature of free humanity. Alternately playfully bawdy and poetically sensuous, wildly populous, subtly symbolic and visually exquisite, the films were wildly popular in Italy and remain perhaps his most enduringly popular works. Yet despite the fact that the trilogy as a whole is considered by many as a masterpiece, Pasolini later reviled his own creation on account of the many soft-core imitations of these three films in Italy that happened afterwards on account of the very same popularity he wound up deeply uncomfortable with. He believed that a bastardisation of his vision had taken place that amounted to a commoditisation of the body he had tried to deny in his trilogy in the first place. The disconsolation this provided is seen as one of the primary reasons for his final film, ''
Salò Salò (; la, Salodium) is a town and ''comune'' in the Province of Brescia in the region of Lombardy (northern Italy) on the banks of Lake Garda, on which it has the longest promenade. The city was the seat of government of the Italian Social R ...
'', in which humans are not only seen as commodities under authoritarian control but are viewed merely as ciphers for its whims, without the free vitality of the figures in the Trilogy of Life. His final work, '' Salò o le 120 giornate di Sodoma'' (''Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom'', 1975), exceeded what most viewers could accept at the time in its explicit scenes of sexual perversity and intensely sadistic violence. Based on the novel '' 120 Days of Sodom'' by
Marquis de Sade Donatien Alphonse François, Marquis de Sade (; 2 June 1740 – 2 December 1814), was a French nobleman, revolutionary politician, philosopher and writer famous for his literary depictions of a libertine sexuality as well as numerous accusat ...
, it is considered Pasolini's most controversial film. In May 2006, '' Time Outs Film Guide named it the "Most Controversial Film" of all time. Salò was intended as the first film of his ''Trilogy of Death'', followed by an aborted biopic film about
Gilles de Rais Gilles de Rais (c. 1405 – 26 October 1440), Baron de Rais (), was a knight and lord from Brittany, Anjou and Poitou, a leader in the French army, and a companion-in-arms of Joan of Arc. He is best known for his reputation and later convi ...
. All titles listed below were written and directed by Pasolini, unless stated otherwise.


Episodes in omnibus films

* " La ricotta" in ''
RoGoPaG ''Ro.Go.Pa.G.'' (also known as "RoGoPaG") is a 1963 film consisting of four segments, each written and directed by a different director. These include the French director Jean-Luc Godard (segment "Il nuovo mondo") and the Italian directors Ugo ...
'' (1963) * First segment of '' La rabbia'' (1963) * "La Terra vista dalla Luna" in ''
Le streghe ''The Witches'' ( it, Le streghe) is a 1967 ''commedia all'italiana'' anthology film produced by Dino De Laurentiis in 1965. It consists of five comic stories, directed by Luchino Visconti, Franco Rossi, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Mauro Bolognini a ...
'' (1967) * "Che cosa sono le nuvole?" in '' Capriccio all'Italiana'' (1968) * "La sequenza del fiore di carta" in ''
Amore e rabbia ''Amore e rabbia'' ''(Love and Anger)'' is a 1969 Italian-French anthology film that includes five films directed by five Italian directors and one French director. It premiered at the 19th Berlin International Film Festival in 1969. Plot The fi ...
'' (1969)


Documentaries

* '' Comizi d'amore'' (1965) * '' Sopralluoghi in Palestina per Il Vangelo secondo Matteo'' (1965) * '' Appunti per un film sull'India'' (1968) * ''Appunti per un romanzo dell'immondizia'' (1970) * '' Appunti per un'Orestiade Africana'' (1970) * ''Le mura di Sana'a'' (1971) * ''12 Dicembre 1972'' (1972) * ''Pasolini e la forma della città'' (1974)


Personal life

A small scandal broke out during a local festival in Ramuscello in September 1949. Someone informed Cordovado, the local sergeant of the ''
carabinieri The Carabinieri (, also , ; formally ''Arma dei Carabinieri'', "Arm of Carabineers"; previously ''Corpo dei Carabinieri Reali'', "Royal Carabineers Corps") are the national gendarmerie of Italy who primarily carry out domestic and foreign polic ...
'', of sexual conduct (
masturbation Masturbation is the sexual stimulation of one's own genitals for sexual arousal or other sexual pleasure, usually to the point of orgasm. The stimulation may involve hands, fingers, everyday objects, sex toys such as vibrators, or combinatio ...
) by Pasolini with three youngsters aged sixteen and younger after dancing and drinking. Cordovado summoned the boys' parents, who hesitantly refused to file charges despite Cordovado's urging. Cordovado nevertheless drew up a report, and the informer elaborated publicly on his accusations, sparking a public uproar. A judge in San Vito al Tagliamento charged Pasolini with "corruption of minors and obscene acts in public places".Martelini, L. 2006, p. 48 He and the 16-year-old were both indicted.Siciliano, Enzo. 2014, 149 The next month, when questioned, Pasolini would not deny the facts, but talked of a "literary and erotic drive" and cited
André Gide André Paul Guillaume Gide (; 22 November 1869 – 19 February 1951) was a French author and winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature (in 1947). Gide's career ranged from its beginnings in the Symbolism (arts), symbolist movement, to the advent o ...
, the 1947
Nobel Prize for Literature ) , image = Nobel Prize.png , caption = , awarded_for = Outstanding contributions in literature , presenter = Swedish Academy , holder = Annie Ernaux (2022) , location = Stockholm, Sweden , year = 1901 , ...
laureate In English, the word laureate has come to signify eminence or association with literary awards or military glory. It is also used for recipients of the Nobel Prize, the Gandhi Peace Award, the Student Peace Prize, and for former music direc ...
. Cordovado informed his superiors and the regional press stepped in. According to Pasolini, the Christian Democrats instigated the entire affair to smear his name ("the Christian Democrats pulled the strings"). He was fired from his job in Valvasone and was expelled from the PCI by the party's Udine section, which he considered a betrayal. He addressed a critical letter to the head of the section, his friend Ferdinando Mautino, and claimed he was being subject to a "tacticism" of the PCI. In the party, the expulsion was opposed by Teresa Degan, Pasolini's colleague in education. He also wrote her a letter admitting his regret for being "such a naif, even indecently so". Pasolini's parents reacted angrily and the situation in the family also became untenable. In late 1949, he decided to move to Rome along with his mother seeking to start a new life, settling down in the outskirts of Rome. In 1963, at the age of 41, Pasolini met "the great love of his life", 15-year-old
Ninetto Davoli Giovanni "Ninetto" Davoli (born 11 October 1948) is an Italian actor who became known through his roles in several of Pier Paolo Pasolini's films. Biography Davoli was born in San Pietro a Maida, Calabria. He was discovered by poet, novelist ...
, whom he later cast in his 1966 film '' Uccellacci e uccellini'' (literally ''Bad Birds and Little Birds'' but translated in English as ''The Hawks and the Sparrows''). Pasolini became the youth's mentor and friend. However, there were some important women in Pasolini's life, with whom Pasolini shared a feeling of profound and unique friendship, in particular
Laura Betti Laura Betti ( Trombetti; 1 May 1927 – 31 July 2004) was an Italian actress known particularly for her work with directors Federico Fellini, Pier Paolo Pasolini and Bernardo Bertolucci. She had a long friendship with Pasolini and made a document ...
and
Maria Callas Maria Callas . (born Sophie Cecilia Kalos; December 2, 1923 – September 16, 1977) was an American-born Greek soprano who was one of the most renowned and influential opera singers of the 20th century. Many critics praised her ''bel cant ...
.
Dacia Maraini Dacia Maraini (; born November 13, 1936) is an Italian writer. Maraini's work focuses on women's issues, and she has written numerous plays and novels. She has won awards for her work, including the Formentor Prize for ''L'età del malessere'' ...
, a famous Italian writer, said of Callas' behavior towards Pasolini: "She used to follow him everywhere, even to Africa. She hoped to 'convert' him to heterosexuality and to marriage." Pasolini was also sensible to the problematics related to the "new" role ascribed to women through the Italian media, stating in a 1972 interview that "women are not slot machines."


Political views


Relationship with the Italian Communist Party

By October 1945, the political status of the
Friuli Friuli ( fur, Friûl, sl, Furlanija, german: Friaul) is an area of Northeast Italy with its own particular cultural and historical identity containing 1,000,000 Friulians. It comprises the major part of the autonomous region Friuli Venezia Giulia ...
region became a matter of contention between different political factions. On 30 October, Pasolini joined the pro-devolution association ''Patrie tal Friul'', founded in
Udine Udine ( , ; fur, Udin; la, Utinum) is a city and ''comune'' in north-eastern Italy, in the middle of the Friuli Venezia Giulia region, between the Adriatic Sea and the Alps (''Alpi Carniche''). Its population was 100,514 in 2012, 176,000 with t ...
. Pasolini wanted a Friuli based on its tradition, attached to its Christianity, but intent on civic and
social progress Progress is the movement towards a refined, improved, or otherwise desired state. In the context of progressivism, it refers to the proposition that advancements in technology, science, and social organization have resulted, and by extension wi ...
, as opposed to those advocates of regional autonomy who wanted to preserve their privileges based on "immobilism".Siciliano, Enzo. 2014, 111–112 He also criticized the
Italian Communist Party The Italian Communist Party ( it, Partito Comunista Italiano, PCI) was a communist political party in Italy. The PCI was founded as ''Communist Party of Italy'' on 21 January 1921 in Livorno by seceding from the Italian Socialist Party (PSI). ...
(PCI) for its opposition to devolution and its preference for Italian centralism. Pasolini founded the party Movimento Popolare Friulano, but ended up quitting upon realizing that it was being used by the
Christian Democratic Party __NOTOC__ Christian democratic parties are political parties that seek to apply Christian principles to public policy. The underlying Christian democracy movement emerged in 19th-century Europe, largely under the influence of Catholic social tea ...
to counter the Yugoslavs, who in turn were attempting to annex large swaths of the Friuli region. On 26 January 1947, Pasolini wrote a declaration that was published on the front page of the newspaper ''Libertà'': "In our opinion, we think that currently only Communism is able to provide a new culture." It generated controversy, partly due to the fact he was still not a member of the PCI. Pasolini planned to extend the work of the Academiuta to the literature of other
Romance language The Romance languages, sometimes referred to as Latin languages or Neo-Latin languages, are the various modern languages that evolved from Vulgar Latin. They are the only extant subgroup of the Italic languages in the Indo-European languages, I ...
s, and met
exile Exile is primarily penal expulsion from one's native country, and secondarily expatriation or prolonged absence from one's homeland under either the compulsion of circumstance or the rigors of some high purpose. Usually persons and peoples suf ...
d
Catalan Catalan may refer to: Catalonia From, or related to Catalonia: * Catalan language, a Romance language * Catalans, an ethnic group formed by the people from, or with origins in, Northern or southern Catalonia Places * 13178 Catalan, asteroid #1 ...
poet Carles Cardó. He took part in several demonstrations after joining the PCI. In May 1949, he attended the Peace Congress in Paris. Observing the struggles of workers and peasants, and watching the clashes of protesters with Italian police, he began to conceive his first novel. During this period, while holding a position as a teacher in a secondary school, he stood out in the local Communist Party section as a skillful writer defying the notion that communism was contrary to Christian values, even though
Pope Pius XII Pope Pius XII ( it, Pio XII), born Eugenio Maria Giuseppe Giovanni Pacelli (; 2 March 18769 October 1958), was head of the Catholic Church and sovereign of the Vatican City State from 2 March 1939 until his death in October 1958. Before his e ...
had excommunicated communist sympathisers from the
Roman Catholic Church The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...
. Local Christian Democrats took notice. In the summer of 1949, Pasolini was told by a priest to renounce politics or lose his teaching position. Similarly, after some posters were put up in Udine, Giambattista Caron, a Christian Democrat deputy, warned Pasolini's cousin Nico Naldini that " asolinishould abandon communist propaganda" to prevent "pernicious reactions".Siciliano, Enzo. 2014, 148


1968 protests

Pasolini generated heated public discussion with controversial analyses of public affairs. The main source regarding Pasolini's views of the student movement is his poem "Il PCI ai giovani" ("The PCI to Young People"), written after the Battle of Valle Giulia. Addressing the students, he tells them that, unlike the international news media which has been reporting on them, he will not flatter them. He points out that they are the children of the
bourgeoisie The bourgeoisie ( , ) is a social class, equivalent to the middle or upper middle class. They are distinguished from, and traditionally contrasted with, the proletariat by their affluence, and their great cultural and financial capital. They ...
("''Avete facce di figli di papà / Vi odio come odio i vostri papà''" – "You have the faces of daddy's boys / I hate you like I hate your dads"), before stating "''Quando ieri a Valle Giulia avete fatto a botte coi poliziotti / io simpatizzavo coi poliziotti''" ("When you and the policemen were throwing punches yesterday at Valle Giulia / I was sympathising with the policemen"). He explained that this sympathy was because the policemen were "''figli di poveri''" ("children of the poor"). The poem highlights the aspect of generational struggle within the bourgeoisie represented by the student movement: "''Stampa e Corriere della Sera, News- week e Monde / vi leccano il culo. Siete i loro figli / la loro speranza, il loro futuro... Se mai / si tratta di una lotta intestina''" ("''
Stampa Stampa is a former municipality in the Maloja district of the Swiss canton, Graubünden. It is now part of the municipality of Bregaglia. History Stampa is first mentioned after 1354 as ''Stamppa'' and was named so in honor of the Stampa famil ...
'' and ''
Corriere della Sera The ''Corriere della Sera'' (; en, "Evening Courier") is an Italian daily newspaper published in Milan with an average daily circulation of 410,242 copies in December 2015. First published on 5 March 1876, ''Corriere della Sera'' is one of It ...
'', ''
Newsweek ''Newsweek'' is an American weekly online news magazine co-owned 50 percent each by Dev Pragad, its president and CEO, and Johnathan Davis (businessman), Johnathan Davis, who has no operational role at ''Newsweek''. Founded as a weekly print m ...
'' and ''
Le Monde ''Le Monde'' (; ) is a French daily afternoon newspaper. It is the main publication of Le Monde Group and reported an average circulation of 323,039 copies per issue in 2009, about 40,000 of which were sold abroad. It has had its own website si ...
'' / they kiss your arse. You are their children / their hope, their future... If anything / it's in-fighting"). The 1968 revolt was seen by Pasolini as an internal, benign reform of the establishment in Italy, since the protesters were part of the petite bourgeoisie. The poem also implied a class hypocrisy on the part of the establishment towards the protesters, asking whether young workers would be treated similarly if they behaved in the same way: "''Occupate le università / ma dite che la stessa idea venga / a dei giovani operai / E allora: Corriere della Sera e Stampa, Newsweek e Monde / avranno tanta sollecitudine / nel cercar di comprendere i loro problemi? / La polizia si limiterà a prendere un po’ di botte / dentro una fabbrica occupata? / Ma, soprattutto, come potrebbe concedersi / un giovane operaio di occupare una fabbrica / senza morire di fame dopo tre giorni?''" ("Occupy the universities / but say that the same idea comes / to young workers / So: ''Corriere della Sera'' and ''Stampa'', ''Newsweek'' and ''Le Monde'' / will have so much care / in trying to understand their problems? / Will the police just get a bit of a fight / inside an occupied factory? / But above all, how could / a young worker be allowed to occupy a factory / without dying of hunger after three days?". Pasolini suggested that the police were the true proletariat, sent to fight for a poor salary and for reasons which they could not understand, against pampered boys of their same age, because they had not had the fortune of being able to study, referring to "''poliziotti figli di proletari meridionali picchiati da figli di papà in vena di bravate''" (lit. "policemen, sons of proletarian southerners, beaten up by arrogant daddy's boys"). He found that the policemen were but the outer layer of the real power, e.g. the judiciary. Pasolini was not alien to courts and trials. During all his life, Pasolini was frequently entangled in up to 33 lawsuits filed against him, variously charged with "public disgrace", "foul language", "obscenity", "pornography", "contempt of religion", "contempt of the state", etc., for which he was always eventually acquitted. However, the conventional interpretation of Pasolini's position has been challenged: in an article published in 2015,
Wu Ming Wu Ming, Chinese for "anonymous", is a pseudonym for a group of Italian authors formed in 2000 from a subset of the Luther Blissett community in Bologna. Four of the group earlier wrote the novel '' Q'' (first edition 1999). Unlike the open nam ...
argues that Pasolini's statements need to be understood in the context of Pasolini's self-confessed hatred of the bourgeoisie which had persecuted him for so long. He notes that "Il PCI ai giovani" states that "We (i.e. Pasolini and the students) are obviously in agreement against the police institution", and that the poem portrays policemen as dehumanised by their work, and that although the battles between students and the police were fights between the rich and the poor, Pasolini concedes that the students were "on the side of reason" whilst the police were "in the wrong". Wu Ming suggests that Pasolini's intent was to express scepticism regarding the idea of students being a revolutionary force, contending that only the working class could make a revolution, and that revolutionary students should join the PCI. Furthermore, he cites a column by Pasolini which was published in the magazine ''Tempo'' later that year, which described the student movement, along with the wartime resistance, as "the Italian people's only two democratic-revolutionary experiences". That year he also wrote in support of the Communist Party's proposals for disarming the police, arguing that this would create a break in the psychology of policemen: "It would lead to the sudden collapse of that ‘false idea of himself’ ascribed to him by Power, which has programmed him like a robot". Pasolini's polemics were aimed at goading protesters into re-thinking their revolt, and did not stop him from contributing to the autonomist ''
Lotta continua Lotta Continua (LC; en, Continuous Struggle) was a far-left paramilitary organization in Italy. It was founded in autumn 1969 by a split in the student-worker movement of Turin, which had started militant activity at the universities and factor ...
'' movement, who he described as "extremists, yes, maybe fanatic and insolently boorish from a cultural point of view, but they push their luck and that is precisely why I think they deserve to be supported. We must want too much to obtain a little".


The rising society of consumption

Pasolini was particularly concerned about the class of the subproletariat, which he portrayed in ''
Accattone ''Accattone'' is a 1961 Italian drama film written and directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini. Despite an original screenplay, the film is often perceived as a cinematic rendition of Pasolini's earlier novels, particularly '' Ragazzi di vita'' (''The R ...
'', and to which he felt both humanly and artistically drawn. He observed that the kind of purity which he perceived in the pre-industrial popular culture was rapidly vanishing, a process that he named ''la scomparsa delle lucciole'' (lit. "''the disappearance of the fireflies''"). The ''joie de vivre'' of boys was being rapidly replaced with more bourgeois ambitions such as a house and a family. He was critical of those leftists who held a "traditional and never admitted hatred against lumpenproletariats and poor populations": in 1958 he called on the PCI to become "‘the party of the poor people’: the party, we may say, of the lumpenproletarians". Pasolini's stance finds its roots in the belief that a Copernican change was taking place in the Italian society and the world. Linked to that very idea, he was also an ardent critic of ''consumismo'', i.e.
consumerism Consumerism is a social and economic order that encourages the acquisition of goods and services in ever-increasing amounts. With the Industrial Revolution, but particularly in the 20th century, mass production led to overproduction—the supp ...
, which he felt had rapidly destroyed Italian society since the mid-1960s to the early 1970s. He described the
coprophagia Coprophagia () or coprophagy () is the consumption of feces. The word is derived from the grc, κόπρος , "feces" and , "to eat". Coprophagy refers to many kinds of feces-eating, including eating feces of other species (heterospecifics), o ...
scenes in ''Salò'' as a comment on the processed food industry. As he saw it, the society of consumerism ("neocapitalism") and the "new fascism" had thus expanded an alienation / homogenization and centralization that the former clerical-fascism had not managed to achieve, so bringing about an anthropological change. That change is related to the loss of
humanism Humanism is a philosophical stance that emphasizes the individual and social potential and agency of human beings. It considers human beings the starting point for serious moral and philosophical inquiry. The meaning of the term "humani ...
and the expansion of productivity as central to the human condition, which he despised. He found that 'new culture' was degrading and vulgar. In one interview, he said: "I hate with particular vehemency the current power, the power of 1975, which is a power that manipulates bodies in a horrible way; a manipulation that has nothing to envy to that performed by
Himmler Heinrich Luitpold Himmler (; 7 October 1900 – 23 May 1945) was of the (Protection Squadron; SS), and a leading member of the Nazi Party of Germany. Himmler was one of the most powerful men in Nazi Germany and a main architect of th ...
or
Hitler Adolf Hitler (; 20 April 188930 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was dictator of Germany from 1933 until his death in 1945. He rose to power as the leader of the Nazi Party, becoming the chancellor in 1933 and then ...
." According to Pasolini scholar Simona Bondavalli, Pasolini's definition of neo-capitalism as a "new fascism" enforced a uniform conformity without resorting to coercive means. As Pasolini put it, " "No Fascist centralism succeeded in doing what the centralism of consumer culture did." Philosopher Davide Tarizzo, summarized Pasolini's position that,


Strong criticism of Christian Democracy

Pasolini saw some continuity between the Fascist era and the post-war political system which was led by the Christian Democrats, describing the latter as "clerico-fascism" due to its use of the state as a repressive instrument and its manipulation of power: he saw the conditions among the Roman subproletariat in the ''borgate'' as an example of this, being marginalised and segregated socially and geographically as they were under Fascism, and in conflict with a criminal police force. He also blamed the Christian Democrats for assimilating the values of consumer capitalism, contributing to what he saw as the erosion of human values. The 1975 regional elections saw the rise of the leftist parties, and dwelling on his blunt, ever more political approach and prophetic style during this period, he declared in ''Corriere della Sera'' that the time had come to put the most prominent Christian Democrat figures on trial, where they would need to be shown walking in handcuffs and led by the
carabinieri The Carabinieri (, also , ; formally ''Arma dei Carabinieri'', "Arm of Carabineers"; previously ''Corpo dei Carabinieri Reali'', "Royal Carabineers Corps") are the national gendarmerie of Italy who primarily carry out domestic and foreign polic ...
: he felt that this was the only way they could be removed from power.Siciliano, Enzo. 2014, pp. 388–389 Pasolini charged the Christian Democratic leadership with being "riddled with Mafia influence", covering up a number of bombings by neo-fascists, collaborating with the CIA, and working with the CIA and the
Italian Armed Forces The Italian Armed Forces ( it, Forze armate italiane, ) encompass the Italian Army, the Italian Navy and the Italian Air Force. A fourth branch of the armed forces, known as the Carabinieri, take on the role as the nation's military police and ar ...
to prevent the rise of the left.


Television linked to cultural alienation

Pasolini was angered by
economic globalization Economic globalization is one of the three main dimensions of globalization commonly found in academic literature, with the two others being political globalization and cultural globalization, as well as the general term of globalization. Econom ...
and cultural domination of the North of Italy (around
Milan Milan ( , , Lombard: ; it, Milano ) is a city in northern Italy, capital of Lombardy, and the second-most populous city proper in Italy after Rome. The city proper has a population of about 1.4 million, while its metropolitan city h ...
) over other regions, especially the South. He felt this was accomplished through the power of television. A debate TV program recorded in 1971, where he denounced censorship, was not actually aired until the day following his murder in November 1975. In a PCI reform plan that he drew up in September and October 1975, among the desirable measures to be implemented, he cited the abolition of television.


Others

Pasolini opposed the gradual disappearance of Italy's minority languages by writing some of his poetry in
Friulan Friulian ( ) or Friulan (natively or ; it, friulano; de-AT, Furlanisch; sl, furlanščina) is a Romance language belonging to the Rhaeto-Romance family, spoken in the Friuli region of northeastern Italy. Friulian has around 600,000 speaker ...
, the regional language of his childhood. His opposition to the liberalization of abortion law made him unpopular on the left. After 1968, Pasolini engaged with the left-libertarian, liberal and
anti-clerical Anti-clericalism is opposition to religious authority, typically in social or political matters. Historical anti-clericalism has mainly been opposed to the influence of Roman Catholicism. Anti-clericalism is related to secularism, which seeks to ...
Radical Party (''Partito Radicale''). He involved himself in
polemics Polemic () is contentious rhetoric intended to support a specific position by forthright claims and to undermine the opposing position. The practice of such argumentation is called ''polemics'', which are seen in arguments on controversial topics ...
with party leader
Marco Pannella Marco Pannella (born Giacinto Pannella; 2 May 1930 – 19 May 2016) was an Italian politician, journalist and activist. He was well known in his country for his nonviolence and civil rights' campaigns, like the right to divorce, the right to ab ...
, supported the Party's initiative calling for eight
referendum A referendum (plural: referendums or less commonly referenda) is a direct vote by the electorate on a proposal, law, or political issue. This is in contrast to an issue being voted on by a representative. This may result in the adoption of a ...
s on various liberalising reforms and had accepted an invitation to speak at the Party's congress before he was killed. However, despite supporting the holding of a referendum on the decriminalisation of abortion, he was opposed to actually decriminalising it, and he also criticised the Party's understanding of democratic activism as being a matter of equalising access to capitalist markets for the working class and other
subaltern Subaltern may refer to: *Subaltern (postcolonialism), colonial populations who are outside the hierarchy of power * Subaltern (military), a primarily British and Commonwealth military term for a junior officer * Subalternation, going from a univer ...
groups. In an interview he gave shortly before his death, Pasolini stated he frequently disagreed with the Party. He continued to give qualified support to the PCI: in June 1975 he said that he would still vote for the PCI because he felt it was "an island where critical consciousness is always desperately defended: and where human behaviour has been still able to preserve the old dignity", and in his final months he became close to the Rome section of the
Italian Communist Youth Federation The Italian Communist Youth Federation ( it, Federazione Giovanile Comunista Italiana, FGCI) was the youth wing of the Italian Communist Party (''Partito Comunista Italiano''; PCI), and the direct heir of the Federazione Giovanile Comunista d'Ita ...
. A Federation activist, Vincenzo Cerami, delivered the speech he was due to give at the Radical Party congress: in it, Pasolini confirmed his Marxism and his support for the PCI. Outside of Italy, Pasolini took a particular interest in the
developing world A developing country is a sovereign state with a lesser developed industrial base and a lower Human Development Index (HDI) relative to other countries. However, this definition is not universally agreed upon. There is also no clear agreem ...
, seeing parallels between life among the Italian underclass and in the third world, going so far as to declare that
Bandung Bandung ( su, ᮘᮔ᮪ᮓᮥᮀ, Bandung, ; ) is the capital city of the Indonesian province of West Java. It has a population of 2,452,943 within its city limits according to the official estimates as at mid 2021, making it the fourth most ...
was the capital of three-quarters of the world and half of Italy. He was also positive about the
New Left The New Left was a broad political movement mainly in the 1960s and 1970s consisting of activists in the Western world who campaigned for a broad range of social issues such as civil and political rights, environmentalism, feminism, gay rights, g ...
in the United States, predicting that it would "lead to an original form of non-Marxist Socialism" and writing that the movement reminded him of the Italian Resistance. Pasolini saw these two areas of struggle as inter-linked: after visiting
Harlem Harlem is a neighborhood in Upper Manhattan, New York City. It is bounded roughly by the Hudson River on the west; the Harlem River and 155th Street (Manhattan), 155th Street on the north; Fifth Avenue on the east; and 110th Street (Manhattan), ...
he stated that "the core of the struggle for the Third World revolution is really America".


Death

Pasolini was murdered and possibly
assassinated Assassination is the murder of a prominent or important person, such as a head of state, head of government, politician, world leader, member of a royal family or CEO. The murder of a celebrity, activist, or artist, though they may not have a ...
on 2 November 1975 on the beach at Ostia. He had been run over several times by his own car. Multiple bones were broken and his
testicles A testicle or testis (plural testes) is the male reproductive gland or gonad in all bilaterians, including humans. It is homologous to the female ovary. The functions of the testes are to produce both sperm and androgens, primarily testostero ...
were crushed by what appeared to be a metal bar. An
autopsy An autopsy (post-mortem examination, obduction, necropsy, or autopsia cadaverum) is a surgical procedure that consists of a thorough examination of a corpse by dissection to determine the cause, mode, and manner of death or to evaluate any di ...
revealed that his body had been partially burned with gasoline after his death. The crime was long viewed as a
Mafia "Mafia" is an informal term that is used to describe criminal organizations that bear a strong similarity to the original “Mafia”, the Sicilian Mafia and Italian Mafia. The central activity of such an organization would be the arbitration of d ...
-style revenge killing, one extremely unlikely to have been carried out by only one person. Pasolini was buried in Casarsa. Giuseppe (Pino) Pelosi (1958–2017), then 17 years old, was caught driving Pasolini's car and confessed to the murder. He was convicted in 1976, initially with "unknown others", but this phrase was later removed from the verdict. Twenty-nine years later, on 7 May 2005, Pelosi retracted his confession, which he said had been made under the threat of violence to his family. He claimed that three people "with a Southern accent" had committed the murder, insulting Pasolini as a "dirty communist". Other evidence uncovered in 2005 suggested that Pasolini had been murdered by an
extortion Extortion is the practice of obtaining benefit through coercion. In most jurisdictions it is likely to constitute a criminal offence; the bulk of this article deals with such cases. Robbery is the simplest and most common form of extortion, ...
ist. Testimony by his friend Sergio Citti indicated that some of the rolls of film from ''
Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom ''Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom'' ( it, Salò o le 120 giornate di Sodoma, billed on-screen ''Pasolini's 120 Days of Sodom'' on English-language prints and commonly referred to as simply ''Salò'' []) is a 1975 horror film, horror art film dir ...
'' had been stolen, and that Pasolini planned to meet with the thieves on 2 November 1975 after a visit to Stockholm, Sweden. Citti's investigation uncovered additional evidence, including a bloody wooden stick and an eyewitness who said he saw a group of men pull Pasolini from the car. The Rome police reopened the case after Pelosi's retraction, but the judges responsible for the investigation found that the new elements were insufficient to justify a continued inquiry.


Legacy

As a director, Pasolini created a
picaresque The picaresque novel (Spanish: ''picaresca'', from ''pícaro'', for " rogue" or "rascal") is a genre of prose fiction. It depicts the adventures of a roguish, but "appealing hero", usually of low social class, who lives by his wits in a corrup ...
neorealism, showing a sad reality. Many people did not want to see such portrayals in artistic work for public distribution. ''
Mamma Roma ''Mamma Roma'' is a 1962 Italian drama film written and directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini, and starring Anna Magnani and Ettore Garofolo. Synopsis In Rome, an ex-prostitute, Mamma Roma (Anna Magnani), tries to start a new life selling vegetables w ...
'' (1962), featuring
Anna Magnani Anna Maria Magnani (; 7 March 1908 – 26 September 1973) was an Italian actress.Obituary ''Variety'', 3 October 1973, pg. 47 She was known for her explosive acting and earthy, realistic portrayals of characters. Born in Rome, she worked her ...
and telling the story of a prostitute and her son, was an affront to the public ideals of morality of those times. His works, with their unequaled poetry applied to cruel realities, showed that such realities were less distant from most daily lives, and contributed to changes in the Italian psyche. Pasolini's work often engendered disapproval perhaps primarily because of his frequent focus on sexual behavior, and the contrast between what he presented and what was publicly sanctioned. While Pasolini's poetry often dealt with his gay love interests, this was not the only, or even main, theme. His interest in and use of Italian dialects should also be noted. Much of the poetry was about his highly revered mother. He depicted certain corners of the contemporary reality as few other poets could do. His poetry, which took some time before it was translated, was not as well known outside Italy as were his films. A collection in English was published in 1996. Pasolini also developed a philosophy of language mainly related to his studies on cinema. This theoretical and critical activity was another hotly debated topic. His collected articles and responses are still available today. These studies can be considered as the foundation of his artistic point of view: he believed that the language—such as English, Italian, dialect or other—is a rigid system in which human thought is trapped. He also thought that the cinema is the "written" language of reality which, like any other written language, enables man to see things from the point of view of truth. His films won awards at the
Berlin International Film Festival The Berlin International Film Festival (german: Internationale Filmfestspiele Berlin), usually called the Berlinale (), is a major international film festival held annually in Berlin, Germany. Founded in 1951 and originally run in June, the festi ...
,
Cannes Film Festival The Cannes Festival (; french: link=no, Festival de Cannes), until 2003 called the International Film Festival (') and known in English as the Cannes Film Festival, is an annual film festival held in Cannes, France, which previews new films o ...
,
Venice Film Festival The Venice Film Festival or Venice International Film Festival ( it, Mostra Internazionale d'Arte Cinematografica della Biennale di Venezia, "International Exhibition of Cinematographic Art of the Venice Biennale") is an annual film festival he ...
, Italian National Syndicate for Film Journalists,
Jussi Awards The Jussi Awards are Finland's premier film industry prizes, awarded annually to recognize the achievements of directors, actors, and writers. History The first Jussi Awards ceremony was held on 16 November 1944 at the Restaurant Adlon in Hels ...
, Kinema Junpo Awards, International Catholic Film Office and
New York Film Critics Circle The New York Film Critics Circle (NYFCC) is an American film critic organization founded in 1935 by Wanda Hale from the New York ''Daily News''. Its membership includes over 30 film critics from New York-based daily and weekly newspapers, magaz ...
. '' The Gospel According to St. Matthew'' was nominated for the United Nations Award of the
British Academy of Film and Television Arts British may refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories, and Crown Dependencies. ** Britishness, the British identity and common culture * British English, ...
(BAFTA) in 1968.


In popular culture

Many documentaries and films have been released since the time of his murder, some of which include: * ''Das Mitleid ist gestorben'', documentary directed by Ebbo Demant and released in 1978. * '' Re: Pasolini'', made by Stefano Battaglia in 2005, it was dedicated to Pasolini. * ''Pasolini'', directed by
Abel Ferrara Abel Ferrara (born July 19, 1951) is an American filmmaker, known for the provocative and often controversial content in his movies and his use of neo-noir imagery and gritty urban settings. A long-time independent filmmaker, some of his best kn ...
. A 2014 biopic directed about Pasolini, with
Willem Dafoe Willem James Dafoe (; born July 22, 1955) is an American actor. He is the recipient of List of awards and nominations received by Willem Dafoe, various accolades, including the Volpi Cup for Best Actor, in addition to receiving nominations for ...
in the lead role. It was selected to compete for the
Golden Lion The Golden Lion ( it, Leone d'oro) is the highest prize given to a film at the Venice Film Festival. The prize was introduced in 1949 by the organizing committee and is now regarded as one of the film industry's most prestigious and distinguishe ...
at the 71st Venice International Film Festival. * ''PPPasolini'', directed by Malga Kubiak, a drama movie based on the story of Pier Paolo Pasolini's life and death, released in 2015. The movie was screened at the seventh edition of the LGBT Film Festival in Warsaw, and received a People's Choice Award at the festival. * '' La macchinazione'', directed by his former collaborator
David Grieco David Grieco (born 19 September 1951) is an Italian director, screenwriter and former actor. Biography Grandson of Ruggero Grieco, one of the founders of the Italian Communist Party, Grieco began his movie career as an actor and worked with di ...
, a 2016 biopic on the last hours of Pasolini's life starring
Massimo Ranieri Massimo Ranieri (born Giovanni Calone on 3 May 1951) is an Italian singer, actor, television presenter and director. Biography Early life Ranieri was born in Naples ( at Santa Lucia), the fifth of eight children in the family. When he was 10, y ...
as Pasolini.


See also

* ''Pasolini'' (film) *'' La macchinazione'' *
List of unsolved murders These lists of unsolved murders include notable cases where victims were murdered in unknown circumstances. * List of unsolved murders (before 1900) * List of unsolved murders (1900–1979) * List of unsolved murders (1980–1999) * List of unsol ...


Notes


References


Further reading

* Aichele, George. "Translation as De-canonization: Matthew's Gospel According to Pasolini – filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini – Critical Essay." ''Cross Currents'' (2002). * Chiesa, Lorenzo. ''Pasolini and the Ugliness of Bodies''. In: Polezzi, Loredana and Ross, Charlotte, eds. In Corpore: Bodies in Post-Unification Italy. Farleigh Dickinson University Press, Madison, pp. 208-227. . * Distefano, John. "Picturing Pasolini", ''Art Journal'' (1997). * Eloit, Audrene. "Oedipus Rex by Pier Paolo Pasolini The Palimpsest: Rewriting and the Creation of Pasolini's Cinematic Language." ''Literature Film Quarterly'' (2004). * Fabbro, Elena (ed.). ''Il mito greco nell'opera di Pasolini''. Atti del Convegno Udine-Casarsa della Delizia, 24–26 ottobre 2002. Udine: Forum (2004); * Forni, Kathleen. "A "Cinema of Poetry": What Pasolini Did to Chancer's Canterbury Tales." ''Literature Film Quarterly'' (2002). * Frisch, Anette. "Francesco Vezzolini: Pasolini Reloaded." Interview, Rutgers University Alexander Library, New Brunswick, NJ. *Ginzburg, Carlo, Safran, Yehuda, Sherer Daniel. "An Interview with Carlo Ginzburg, by Yehuda Safran and Daniel Sherer." Potlatch 5 (2022), special issue on Carlo Ginzburg. Discussion of Ginzburg's meeting with Pasolini and Elsa Morante and Pasolini's interest in Ginzburg's work as a historian of Friuli. * Green, Martin. "The Dialectic Adaptation." * Greene, Naomi. ''Pier Paolo Pasolini: Cinema as Heresy''. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1990. * Hamza, Agon. ''Althusser and Pasolini - Philosophy, Marxism and Film''. Palgrave, NY (2016); * Meyer-Krahmer, Benjamin. "Transmediality and Pastiche as Techniques in Pasolini’s Art Production", in: P.P.P. – Pier Paolo Pasolini and death, eds. Bernhart Schwenk, Michael Semff, Ostfildern 2005, pp. 109–118 * Passannanti, Erminia, ''Il corpo & il potere. Salò o le 120 giornate di Sodoma di Pier Paolo Pasolini'', Prima edizione, Troubador, Leicester, 2004; Seconda Edizione, Joker, Savona 2008. * Passannanti, Erminia,''Il Cristo del'Eresia. Pier Paolo Pasolini. Cinema e Censura'', Joker, Savona 2009. * Passannanti, Erminia, ''La ricotta. Il Sacro trasgredito. Il cinema di Pier Paolo Pasolini e la censura religiosa'', 2009 also published in "Italy on Screen" (Peter Lang Ed., 2011). The book contains excerpts from the 1962 court trial. * Pugh, Tison. "Chaucerian Fabliaux, Cinematic Fabliau: Pier Paolo Pasolini's I racconti di Canterbury", ''Literature Film Quarterly'' (2004). * Restivo, Angelo. ''The Cinema of Economic Miracles: Visuality and Modernization in the Italian Art Film''. London: Duke UP, 2002. * Rohdie, Sam. ''The Passion of Pier Paolo Pasolini''. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana UP, 1995. * Rumble, Patrick A. ''Allegories of contamination: Pier Paolo Pasolini's Trilogy of life''. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996. * Schwartz, Barth D. ''Pasolini Requiem''. 1st ed. New York: Pantheon Books, 1992. * Siciliano, Enzo. ''Pasolini: A Biography''. Trans. John Shepley. New York: Random House, 1982. * Thompson, N.S., ''Pier Paolo Pasolini: Poet and Prophet'', in Murray, Glen (ed.), ''
Cencrastus ''Cencrastus'' was a magazine devoted to Scottish and international literature, arts and affairs, founded after the Referendum of 1979 by students, mainly of Scottish literature at Edinburgh University, and with support from Cairns Craig, then a ...
'' No. 7, Winter 1981 - 82, pp. 30 – 32. * Tusa, Giovanbattista. "The Pasolinian Century", in: Hildebrandt, Toni and Tusa, Giovanbattista (eds.), ''PPPP. Pier Paolo Pasolini Philosopher''. Mimesis International, 2022, pp. 317–323. * Viano, Maurizio. ''A Certain Realism: Making Use of Pasolini's Film Theory and Practice''. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993. * Willimon, William H. "Faithful to the script", ''Christian Century'' (2004).


External links

*
Interview with Jonas Mekas in Bomb Magazine

Pasolini on Filmgalerie451

Piers Paolo Pasolini
Italian Website with Extensive Commentary
"Pier Paolo Pasolini"
Senses of Cinema
BBC News Report on the Reopening of the Murder Case
* Guy Flatley

, MovieCrazed
Doug Ireland, "Restoring Pasolini"
ZMag


Pier Paolo Pasolini Poems
– Original Italian Text. * (Interrupted and Half-Censored by
Enzo Biagi Enzo Biagi (; 9 August 1920 – 6 November 2007) was an Italian journalist, writer and former partisan. Life and career Biagi was born in Lizzano in Belvedere, and began his career as a journalist in Bologna. In 1952, he worked on the screenpla ...
)
Italian Website dedicated to Pasolini

Pasolini's Second to Last Interview, Long Believed to Have Been Lost


Dennis Lim, ''
The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'', 26 December 2012 {{DEFAULTSORT:Pasolini, Pier Paolo 1922 births 1975 murders in Italy 1975 deaths 20th-century Italian dramatists and playwrights 20th-century Italian essayists 20th-century Italian journalists 20th-century Italian male actors 20th-century Italian male writers 20th-century Italian novelists 20th-century Italian painters 20th-century Italian poets 20th-century Italian screenwriters 20th-century LGBT people Actors from Bologna Anti-consumerists Artists from Veneto Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Screenplay winners Communist poets Deaths by beating in Italy Directors of Golden Bear winners Fantasy film directors Film people from Bologna Friulian-language poets Italian gay actors Gay artists Gay writers Italian anti-abortion activists Italian anti-fascists Italian atheists Italian columnists Italian documentary film directors Italian dramatists and playwrights Italian experimental filmmakers Italian film critics Italian magazine editors Italian magazine founders Italian male dramatists and playwrights Italian male essayists Italian male film actors Italian male journalists Italian male novelists Italian male painters Italian male poets Italian male screenwriters Italian Marxist journalists Italian Marxist writers Italian people of Polish-Jewish descent Italian-language film directors LGBT artists from Italy LGBT film directors LGBT journalists from Italy LGBT poets LGBT writers from Italy Male murder victims Mass media people from Bologna Mass media people from Cremona Murdered Italian journalists Nastro d'Argento winners Painters from Bologna Painters from Cremona Painters of Emilia-Romagna People from Belluno People from Casarsa della Delizia People from Conegliano People from Idrija People from Reggio Emilia People from Scandiano People murdered in Italy People of Friulian descent Unsolved murders in Italy Viareggio Prize winners Writers from Bologna Writers from Cremona Writers from Emilia-Romagna Writers from Friuli-Venezia Giulia Writers from Veneto