Pier Paolo Pasolini

1963: The Mondo Libero newsreel by Gastone Ferranti and other material found in Czechoslovakia, the Soviet Union and England became, for Pier Paolo Pasolini, the basis for a lyrical and polemical analysis of the social phenomena and conflicts affecting the modern world, from the Cold War to the Economic Boom, with commentary consisting of a “poetical voice” (Giorgio Bassani) and a “prosaic voice” (Renato Guttuso).
While Pasolini was working on editing “La Rabbia”, the producer, with either political and/or commercial motives, decided to turn the movie into a four-handed work, and entrusted Giovannino Guareschi with a part of it, following the well known journalist-like scheme “seen by right, seen by left.”
Pasolini reacted with irritation to this forced co-habitation, but in the end he acquiesced, giving up the first part of his movie to make room for Guareschi’s segment.Read More »

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A wealthy Italian household is turned upside down when a handsome stranger arrives, seduces every family member and then disappears. Each has an epiphany of sorts, but none can figure out who the seductive visitor was or why he came.Read More »

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The concluding part of Pier Paolo Pasolini’s “Trilogy Of Life”, following The Decameron and The Canterbury Tales, Arabian Nights corrects many of the mistakes found in the latter, noticeably its ramshackle, uneven approach, and returns to the charming territory of the former. Indeed, the film is as good as The Decameron, if not better, and is generally considered to be the trilogies crowning moment and one of Pasolini’s finest films (critic Tony Rayns recently included it amongst his choices for Sight and Sound’s 2002 Top Ten Critics’ Poll).Read More »

it’s a movie about a woman who beheads her brother, stabs her children, and sends her lover’s wife up in flames. For Maria Callas, it’s a natural.

Based on the plot of Euripides’ Medea. Medea centers on the barbarian protagonist as she finds her position in the Greek world threatened, and the revenge she takes against her husband Jason who has betrayed her for another woman.Read More »

A man and his son take an allegorical stroll through life with a talking bird that spouts social and political philosophy.Read More »

New, restored high-definition digital transfer, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
The notorious final film from Pier Paolo Pasolini, Salò, or The 120 Days of Sodom has been called nauseating, shocking, depraved, pornographic . . . It’s also a masterpiece. The controversial poet, novelist, and filmmaker’s transposition of the Marquis de Sade’s eighteenth-century opus of torture and degradation to Fascist Italy in 1944 remains one of the most passionately debated films of all time, a thought-provoking inquiry into the political, social, and sexual dynamics that define the world we live in.Read More »

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The director presents takes and scenes filmed on location in Africa for a film-that-never-was, a black Oresteia.Read More »

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A mythical tale of love, betrayal and revenge, Medea is a fascinating collision of Freudian and Marxist themes from Italy’s most controversial director, Pier Paolo Pasolini. Adapted from the Euripides drama, Pasolini’s disturbing vision of personal and national conflicts stars operatic legend Maria Callas in the title role, offering an extraordinary performance as the high priestess Medea whose love is threatened by corrupt political ambition. A vivid and aesthetically challenging vision, Medea is a complex blend of classical mythology and contemporary social criticism.Read More »

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Pasolini doesn’t so much ‘meet’ with people of all regions of his country as interrogate them, trying to investigate the sexual mores of his time in a typical melding of politics and sex, of Marx and Freud. Although dated, it’s vital as a time capsule of 60’s Italy and as a man-on-the-streets pseudo-sociological examination of then-prevalent attitudes towards homosexuality, marriage, prostitution and divorce. The execution and image quality is rough – even for Pasolini – thought it’s no doubt intentional and a visual reflection of the project’s spur-of-the-moment, pieces-sewn-together approach.Read More »