Giuseppe Zigaina will read poems by Pasolini in Italian. Beverly Allen, Assistant Professor of Italian and Comparative Literature at Stanford University and editor of Pier Paolo Pasolini: The Poetics of Heresy, will translate the poems into English.

Accattone
Pasolini's first film is set in the milieu of his novels--the world of prostitutes, pimps and drifters living on the outskirts of Rome and existing outside of both bourgeois and proletarian morality. Accattone, “The Scrounger” (played by a non-professional actor, Franco Citti, the brother of Pasolini's friend and collaborator, Sergio Citti), lives as a thief, beggar and pimp. When he falls in love with Stella (Franca Pasut), he tries to reform but cannot. French film historian Georges Sadoul writes, “Accattone is neorealism rejuvenated--with a vengeance. There is none of the sentimentalism that marks some of the postwar Italian films; for Pasolini, there is no solution to Accattone's problem, no escape from the vicious circle of despair, vice and poverty.... (The film's) rough-edged style, its cool, unhysterical portrayal of corruption, cruelty and violence, and its quiet lyricism marked one of the most significant directorial debuts of the sixties.”