Pier Paolo Pasolini

9/20/13 to 10/31/13

A brilliant artist who was at the center of the intellectual life of postwar Europe, controversial and influential Italian director Pier Paolo Pasolini (1922–1975) took inspiration from many sources: Renaissance painting, Romanticism, Freudian psychology, Italian neorealism, ethnographic filmmaking, and music. This comprehensive retrospective features brand-new 35mm prints, many of which were restored by Cineteca di Bologna.

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Past Films

Accattone
Friday, September 20 7 pm
Pier Paolo Pasolini (Italy, 1961). New 35mm Print! Pasolini's famous debut film, a hard-edged and lyrical tragedy set in the Dantean slums of Rome. “Incandescent” (NY Times). (117 mins)
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The Gospel According to St. Matthew
Sunday, September 22 5 pm
Pier Paolo Pasolini (Italy, 1964). New 35mm Print! “Pasolini's most satisfying movie. . . . The director's Catholicism and Marxism serve him well here (but) the film's beauty . . . derives from its simplicity” (Time Out). (137 mins)
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La rabbia di Pasolini
Thursday, September 26 7:30 pm
Pier Paolo Pasolini, Giuseppe Bertolucci (Italy, 1963/2008). New 35mm Print! Pasolini's 1963 film essay, constructed from newsreel footage accompanied by poetic and political commentary, reveals his radical view of history. With La ricotta. (116 mins)
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In Search of Locations for The Gospel According to St. Matthew
Saturday, September 28 6:30 pm
Pier Paolo Pasolini (Italy, 1964 ). New 35mm Print! A record of Pasolini's travels in Israel and Palestine in preparation for The Gospel According to St. Matthew. With Notes for a Film about India. (87 mins)
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Love Meetings
Saturday, September 28 8:20 pm
Pier Paolo Pasolini (Italy, 1964). New 35mm Print! Pasolini interviews Italians from all walks of life on the subjects of love, prostitution, homosexuality, marriage, and the family. (90 mins)
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Oedipus Rex
Sunday, September 29 7:30 pm
Pier Paolo Pasolini (Italy, 1967). New 35mm Print! A dreamlike evocation of the Oedipus myth, filmed in Moroccan landscapes and set to music as disparate as Romanian folk tunes and Japanese pieces. (104 mins)
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Notes for an African Orestes
Thursday, October 3 7 pm
Pier Paolo Pasolini (Italy, 1970). New 35mm Print! Pasolini's documentary-mainly handheld 16mm footage-on his preparations to film a modern-day version of Aeschylus's Oresteia in Uganda and Tanzania. With The Walls of Sana'a. (86 mins)
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Teorema
Saturday, October 5 6:30 pm
Pier Paolo Pasolini (Italy, 1968). New 35mm Print! Pasolini's first film shot in a bourgeois milieu is predicated on the theorem that “anything done by the bourgeoisie, however sincere, profound and noble it is, is on the wrong track.” (105 mins)
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Hawks and Sparrows
Sunday, October 6 7:15 pm
Pier Paolo Pasolini (Italy, 1966). New 35mm Print! The great Italian comic Totò plays opposite Pasolini discovery Ninetto Davoli in this Brechtian slapstick set in the time of St. Francis. (89 mins)
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Medea
Saturday, October 12 6:15 pm
Pier Paolo Pasolini (Italy, 1969). New 35mm Print! Photographed in brilliant color in Syria, Turkey, and Italy, Medea is an exotic and controversial reconstruction of the Greek legend featuring Maria Callas in her first and only film. (110 mins)
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A Pasolini Omnibus: Three Short Films
Sunday, October 13 5:30 pm
Pier Paolo Pasolini (Italy, 1966–68). Pasolini's contributions to three omnibus films: The Earth as Seen from the Moon, What Are the Clouds?, and The Paper Flower. (64 mins)
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Mamma Roma
Saturday, October 19 6:15 pm
Pier Paolo Pasolini (Italy, 1962). New 35mm Print! Pasolini captured the great Anna Magnani “like a found object” (Village Voice) in her role as a spirited prostitute; her downtrodden exuberance stands in for Rome itself. (111 mins)
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Pigsty
Saturday, October 19 8:30 pm
Pier Paolo Pasolini (Italy, 1969). New 35mm Print! A film in two parts (Orgy and Pigsty) about cannibalism and bestiality. "It may be unlovable, but it is triumphantly unforgettable” (Richard Roud). Adults only. (98 mins)
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The Decameron
Saturday, October 26 6:15 pm
Pier Paolo Pasolini (Italy, 1971). New 35mm Print! "One of the most beautiful, turbulent and uproarious panoramas of early Renaissance life ever put on film” (NY Times). Adults only.(111 mins)
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The Canterbury Tales
Saturday, October 26 8:30 pm
Pier Paolo Pasolini (Italy, 1972). New 35mm Print! “Chaucer is played for maximum ribaldry . . . (this adaptation is) uniformly gorgeous” (Village Voice). Adults only. (123 mins)
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The Arabian Nights
Sunday, October 27 5 pm
Pier Paolo Pasolini (Italy, 1974). New 35mm Print! A magic-carpet fantasy rooted in realism, filmed in North Africa, Iran, and Nepal. “Pasolini's most beautiful film” (Tony Rayns). Adults only. (129 mins)
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Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom
Thursday, October 31 7 pm
Pier Paolo Pasolini (Italy, 1975). New 35mm Print! Pasolini's most controversial film-a graphic adaptation of the Marquis de Sade's famous work, adapted to an Italian Fascist milieu-“has not been tamed by the passage of years” (LA Times). Adults only. (117 mins)
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Pier Paolo Pasolini

9/20/13 to 10/31/13

This comprehensive retrospective of the influential Italian director Pier Paolo Pasolini (1922–1975) features brand-new 35mm prints, many of which were restored by Cineteca di Bologna, presented in conjunction with the Pasolini programs at the Castro Theatre and the Roxie Theater on September 14 and 15.

A brilliant artist who was at the center of the intellectual life of postwar Europe, Pasolini enjoyed a multidisciplinary career as a novelist, poet, playwright, actor, painter, polemicist, and filmmaker. No stranger to controversy, scandal, and censure (he was involved in some thirty-three trials during his lifetime!), Pasolini represented and articulated many critical perspectives: as a defiant homosexual, a non-aligned leftist, a Catholic (who was tried for insulting the church), and a visionary artist.

Pasolini's cinema takes its inspiration from many sources: Renaissance painting, Romanticism, Freudian psychology,...

Pasolini's cinema takes its inspiration from many sources: Renaissance painting, Romanticism, Freudian psychology, Italian neorealism, ethnographic filmmaking, and music-his films share an affinity to musical structures and form. His aesthetic often rebuked traditional film grammar, opting instead for a spirit of experimentation. More often than not, he drew upon nonprofessional actors, casting peasants and urban youths who brought an authenticity and edginess to his narrative films. Behind the camera, Pasolini collaborated with top-notch filmmakers, including cinematographers Tonino Delli Colli and Giuseppe Ruzzolini, costume designer Danilo Donati, and composer Ennio Morricone, often working with the crew on location, be it Syria, Yemen, or the impoverished outskirts of Rome. As a poet/filmmaker, he spoke of his “tendency always to see something sacred and mythic and epic in everything, even the most humdrum, simple and banal objects and events.”

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Coproduced by BAM/PFA, Luce Cinecittà, Rome, and Fondo Pier Paolo Pasolini/Cineteca di Bologna. The retrospective has been organized by Susan Oxtoby, BAM/PFA; Amelia Antonucci, Colpa Cinema; and Camilla Cormanni and Paola Ruggiero, Luce Cinecittà; with Roberto Chiesi, Fondo Pier Paolo Pasolini/Cineteca di Bologna. Presented in association with the Ministry of Culture of Italy. Special thanks to the Italian Cultural Institute San Francisco and The Museum of Modern Art, New York. This event is part of the celebrations of the Year of Italian Culture in the U.S.