As part of the exhibition Pier Paolo Pasolini. TUTTO È SANTO
The Palazzo delle Esposizioni presents

PASOLINI PROSSIMO NOSTRO
film retrospective by
Azienda Speciale Palaexpo and
Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia – Cineteca Nazionale

Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Sala Cinema | 20 October – 08 December 2022

Projections in 35 mm film and DCP
download the press release of the exhibition

FREE ENTRY WITH RESERVATION UNTIL PLACES ARE AVAILABLE

Pier Paolo Pasolini’s films have had the great merit of not being like anything or anyone else, perhaps because Pasolini was not only a director but also a novelist, poet, playwright, and essayist. Those black-and-white sequence shots of the shacks and the close-ups of the marked and hieratic faces of a Third World Rome had a strong influence on future filmmakers interested in investigating places and bodies of the marginalised. They were the natural stages of a peasant world in which the “economic miracle” was gradually disintegrating. There are similarities in the works of authors such as Mauro Bolognini, Ettore Scola, and Pasolini’s friend and collaborator Sergio Citti. Overseas, the segregated environment of the underclass is translated with degraded and urban environments by the firm Warhol – Morrissey in films like Trash – The Waste of New York, whose Italian dubbing was handled by Pasolini and Dacia Maraini. The pleasant blends of myth, apocalyptic apologue, and fairy tale in Edipo Re, Porcile, Medea, and Il fiore delle Mille e una notte affected the aesthetics and ethics of much of Cinema Novo, as well as Jodorowsky’s desert visions. When Derek Jarman (Caravaggio) makes his transgressive interpretation of some historical periods and characters, he owes it to The Canterbury Tales and La ricotta. Jarman himself played Pasolini in Julian Cole’s short film Ostia. In line with the aesthetics of the “borgatari” novels and the film Accattone, there is Toxic Love and Don’t be Bad by Claudio Caligari, where social degradation returns with the drama of drugs. Instead, the cynicism of Ciprì and Maresco is more tied to a nihilistic aesthetic, both debtors to the apocalyptic Ferreri and to the despairing Pasolini of Porcile and Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom. Authors like the D’Innocenzo brothers, Matteo Garrone, Matteo Botrugno, and Daniele Coluccini, not to mention the “vesuvians” like Antonio Capuano and Pappi Corsicato, were notably influenced by Pasolini’s early works.

PASSEGGIATE ROMANE
Thursday, October 20, at 8.00 p.m.
ACCATTONE
by Pier Paolo Pasolini. Italy, 1961, 116’
Pasolini’s shifting from writer to director occurred with a surprise debut, with characters as genuine and epic as they had never been seen on screen before. In the extreme outskirts of Rome, the director reveals a sacred and mythical underclass composed of pimps and thieves, emblem of those who see themselves precluded from any path but homologation. At the time, the young Bernardo Bertolucci was the assistant director: “I watched Pier Paolo’s inventions with emotion; it seemed to me to live the origins of cinema.”

followed by
LA SEQUENZA DEL FIORE DI CARTA
(an episode from Love and Anger) by Pier Paolo Pasolini. Italy, 1969, 10′
The film superimposes images of wars and genocides on Ninetto Davoli’s cheerful walk along Via Nazionale in Rome, stating that innocent ignorance is no longer acceptable and implies culpable responsibility

Friday, October 21, 8.00 p.m.
UGLY, DIRTY AND BAD
by Ettore Scola. Italy, 1976, 115′

The barracks at Rome’s gates are swarming with a backward humanity in the 1970s, led by the elderly, one-eyed, and selfish Nino Manfredi. Through his distinctive direction, Scola takes us to a dreadful underworld on the outskirts of the city. For this work, Scola won an award at Cannes.

Saturday, October 22, 8.00 pm
TOXIC LOVE 
by Claudio Caligari. Italy, 1983, 84′
A bunch of Ostia lads engage in prostitution, theft, and beggaring in order to obtain drugs. Caligari spent entire days filming the real drug addicts, forcing the viewer to open his eyes wide to a terrible reality. The film, which won the Venice Film Festival, celebrates the definitive funeral of the underclass, so dear to Pasolini.

Sunday, October 23, 8.00 pm
SACRED POINT
by Francesca Mazzoleni. Italy, 2020, 94′
Punta Sacra is the last triangle of habitable space at the mouth of the Tiber, and also the last self-built village of Ostia. The documentary tells the life of this community, made up of 500 families, like the all-female one of Franca, who is the narrator and the engine of the stories that make this strip of land alive. A tale between realism and imaginary projections, between nostalgia and inevitable pragmatism.

MAMME ITALIANE
Tuesday, October 25, at 20.00
MAMMA ROMA
by Pier Paolo Pasolini. Italy, 1962, 102′
Inspired by Accattone, Anna Magnani decided to collaborate with Pasolini; it was an immediate stormy relationship due to differences in working methods, but it produced one of our cinema’s most significant films. Mamma Roma lives in the suburbs of Rome. She is a former prostitute looking for social redemption and the victim of her naive devotion to a completely foreign community. The digital restoration (4k) of Mamma Roma was carried out by CSC – Cineteca Nazionale.

Wednesday, October 26, 8.00 p.m.
TWISTED REALISM
by Maria Iorio & Raphaël Cuomo. Switzerland, Italy, 2012, 75 ‘
An intriguing reimagining of Mamma Roma’s locations and contents by a Swiss artist duo dedicated to rebuilding a counter-memory of the “economic miracle.” The artists focus on the anthropological alteration of the country highlighted by Pasolini’s film by interweaving film excerpts, footage of the Tuscolano area, script fragments, first-hand testimony, advertising, and vintage slogans.

Thursday, October 27, at 20.00
LIBERA
by Pappi Corsicato. Italy, 1993, 88 ‘
Three women of diverse socioeconomic origins fight to redeem themselves against the backdrop of a degraded and contradictory Naples; liberating themselves from family, men, or money, they find themselves even more alone. An amazing grotesque comedy that demonstrates Corsicato’s original creativity and is reminiscent of Almodóvar’s mélo in its saturated imagery and surreal atmosphere.

TOTÒ E PASOLINI
Friday, October 28, at 20.00
Alberto Anile introduce the event
THE HAWKS AND THE SPARROW
by Pier Paolo Pasolini. Italy, 1966, 88 ‘
In a picaresque itinerary of thrills and disasters, a father and son journey across the no man’s land of Rome’s outlying landfills, accompanied by a Marxist talking crow in crisis. Totò’s tragicomic mask, with Ninetto Davoli’s dreamy face, is the extraordinary protagonist of a bizarre fairy tale through the debris of life at the termination of every imaginable ideological fantasy.

followed by
TOTÒ AL CIRCO (8′), A scene not included in the final cut of the film


ALL’ORIGINE DEL SACRO
Saturday, October 29, 20.00 p.m.
The Gospel According to St. Matthew
by Pier Paolo Pasolini. Italy, France, 1964, 138 ‘
Many consider it to be Pasolini’s masterpiece. Possibly his most experimental and stylistically inspired film. The film explores the sacred and the mystery of death, exalting a revolutionary Christ, one of the most unforgettable that has been shown in cinema, whose divine strength rests exactly in his high and rigorous humanity.

Sunday, October 30, 20.00 p.m.
Location Hunting in Palestine
by Pier Paolo Pasolini. Italy, 1964, 54 ‘
The filmmaker visits the locations of the Gospel tale to chronicle the development that has irreversibly transformed the area. In his research, he captures the everlasting charm of ordinary people everywhere.

followed by
APPUNTI PER UN FILM SULL’INDIA
by Pier Paolo Pasolini. Italy, 1968, 34 ‘
Pasolini planned and never completed a film on democratic India and its myths. His preparatory notes have survived, attesting to his bewilderment over the country’s inconsistencies and, on the other hand, the impressive serenity of ordinary people.

Tuesday, November 1, 20.00
TOTO’ WHO LIVED TWICE
by Ciprì and Maresco. Italy, 1998, 94′
The film is divided into three tales that connect bizarre and profane characters in a hideous and apocalyptic Palermo. In our cinematic landscape, this alien film brings to the screen a desperate, extreme, and nihilistic theatre of the absurd. It is the last film in Italy to be censored due to the “cynical” transfiguration of Christ’s preaching and passion.

Wednesday, November 2, at 20.00 
OSTIA
by Sergio Citti. Italy, 1970, 100′
Sergio Citti’s debut film was written with Pasolini, who also supervised it. Citti was a close collaborator and friend of Pasolini. The film depicts the narrative of the Roman underclass as a poetic and heartbreaking folk tale.

Thursday, November 3, at 20.00
THE LIONS HAS SEVEN HEADS
by Glauber Rocha. Italy, France, 1970, 95′, original version
This parody against European colonialism in Africa was shot in exile by Rocha and is one of the most prominent products of the 68’s cinema of dissent. Rocha is the best-known exponent of Brazilian Cinema Novo, a cinematic movement founded in resistance to the control Hollywood has over imagination.
“I’ve always shot Africans using their own forms of representation. […] The film is as if it were a primitive African drama, which rejects the language of bourgeois cinema.”

Friday, November 4, at 20.00
TEOREMA
by Pier Paolo Pasolini. Italy, 1968, 98 ‘
A beautiful young guest seduces the inhabitants of a wealthy man’s house, causing a crisis in their lives. An unrelenting assault on the self-satisfied bourgeoisie is doomed to descend into the emptiness veiled under icy conformism and prudery. A film with an ambiguous and unsettling charm, in which, as Jean Renoir observed, “you can feel the disturbance that Pasolini brings to the screen, and that engages the conscience of the viewer. What scandalises is not the obscenity, which is absent; the real scandal is sincerity”.

Saturday, November 5, at 20.00
MEDEA
by Pier Paolo Pasolini. Italy, France, West Germany. 1969, 118 ‘
A brilliant work of art featuring the legendary Maria Callas, who is fascinated by Pasolini and plays her one and only part in motion pictures. For him, she represents the murderous banished witch, a symbol of an old and punitive fury and the antithesis of contemporary ignorance devoid of morals or mythology. Piero Tosi’s superlative costumes recreate primitive and magical barbarism.

Sunday, November 6, at 20.00
THE HOLY MOUNTAIN
by Alejandro Jodorowsky. Mexico, USA, 1973, 114 ‘, vo sub. it .
This cult movie is among the weirdest in Jodorowsky’s filmography. Jodorowsky is a musician, stage designer, costume designer, and actor in addition to being a filmmaker. It is a fiery, surrealist, and sacrilegious satire that intertwines alchemical rituals, shamanic practices, psychedelia, and sensuality in a visual fury that retains an unrivalled hypnotic charm.

Tuesday, November 8, at 20.00
NOTE TOWARDS AN AFRICAN ORESTES
by Pier Paolo Pasolini. Italy, 1970, 73 ‘
Pasolini planned a film on third-world countries, that he couldn’t complete. What remains, however, is this fascinating study on the passage of an old culture into modernity.

Wednesday, November 9, at 20.00
OEDIPUS REX
by Pier Paolo Pasolini. Italy, 1967, 105 ‘
The director foregoes a modern setting in favour of an old and tribal component to depict the inexplicable conflict of human instincts. The goal is to make Oedipus the archetype of Western identity. The film has a clear Freudian and personal objective, bringing to the big screen a mythologised account of the director’s life and his Oedipus complex.

Saturday, November 12, at 20.00
PORCILE
by Pier Paolo Pasolini. Italy, 1969, 98 ‘
One of Pasolini’s most aesthetically and ideologically extreme films, leaving an indelible apocalyptic imprint on modern society. The grotesque metaphor of capitalist power as a human pigsty condemned to decay reveals the ineffectiveness of every adolescent transgression.

Sunday, November 13, at 20.00
THE SEED OF MAN
by Marco Ferreri. France, Italy, 1969, 105 ‘
After surviving a mysterious epidemic and crossing half-destroyed cities and piles of corpses, a young couple takes refuge in a house by the sea. In this amazing apocalyptic story, Ferreri returns to meet science fiction, inciting the annihilation of aberrant humanity and reaching the pinnacle of his nihilism.

COMIZI NON SOLO D’AMORE
Tuesday, November 15, at 20.00 p.m.
LA RABBIA DI PASOLINI
Giuseppe Bertolucci’s reconstruction hypothesis for the film’s original version. Italy, 1963-2008, 83′
Pasolini’s experiment, in which he invented the film essay. Pasolini constructs a history of the period from a massive collection of old newsreels in order to expose the triumphalist rhetoric and show his rejection of homologation.

followed by
RABBIA 1, RABBIA 2, RABBIA 3… ARABIA
by Tatti Sanguineti. Italy, 2008, 69 ‘
La rabbia‘s problematic production process is reconstructed by Tatti Sanguineti, who also offers a plausible theory as to why it was pulled from theatres a short time after it was released: “I complicate things by rummaging through complicit and less complicit archives, advancing hypotheses, and perhaps discovering sensational truths.”

Wednesday, November 16, at 20.00 p.m.
LOVE MEETINGS
by Pier Paolo Pasolini. Italy, 1964, 90 ‘
An examination of how Italians view love and sexuality, featuring comments from Cesare Musatti and Alberto Moravia. The feature offers intriguing anthropological insights regarding the backwardness of our country.

Thursday, November 17, at 20.00
Alberto Anile and Maurizio Ponzi introduce the event.
The gathering will feature the presentation of the Goffredo Fofi book Per Pasolini La Nave di Teseo, Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia, 2022.

followed by
12 DICEMBRE 
by Pier Paolo Pasolini (uncredited) and Giovanni Bonfanti. Italy, 1972, 104′
To create this documentary, Pasolini worked with the leftist extra-parliamentary group Lotta Continua. The film criticises the country’s harsh policy and the significant cultural transformations that occurred in the years after the tragedy of Piazza Fontana.

Friday, November 18, at 20:00 p.m.
COMIZI D’AMORE 80
by Cecilia Mangini and Lino Del Fra. Italy, 1982, episodes I and II, 120 ‘
Since Pasolini was the first Italian filmmaker to pay attention to the peripheries of industrial society, Cecilia Mangini was the first Italian woman to document our nation’s history. She asks the same questions from Pasolini’s rallies 20 years later, confirming a retrograde portrait of our society.

RAGAZZI DI VITA
Saturday, November 19, at 20.00
RAGAZZI DI TRASTEVERE
by Umberto Lenzi. Italy, 1956, 19 ‘
Diploma essay freely inspired by Pasolini’s novel, Ragazzi di vita. The film is striking for its dialogues of unprecedented credibility, and anticipates the motives and situations of Pasolini’s films. The author of the essay, at the time a CSC student, is Umberto Lenzi, future key director of the “Poliziottesco” genre.

followed by
THE BIG NIGHT
by Mauro Bolognini. Italy, France, 1959, 95′
Between thievery, prostitution, and violence, Scintillone and Ruggeretto lead a foolish life in the suburbs of Rome.
Pasolini’s “Ragazzi di vita” makes its first burst on the screen and shouts in the face of the public the submerged side of society. Pasolini was the co-screenwriter of the film.

Sunday, November 20, at 8.00 pm
A VIOLENT LIFE
by Paolo Heusch and Brunello Rondi. Italy, France, 1962, 107′
A gang of pals who express their rage through nocturnal raids, robberies, and thefts. Everything takes place in the desolate suburbs between mud and misery. The film was released in theatres right after Accattone and is based on Pasolini’s second and most well-known novel of the same name. The film has an independent power and a compellingly painful essentiality that differ from Pasolini’s cinematic premises.

Tuesday, November 22, at 8.00 pm
VITO AND THE OTHERS
by Antonio Capuano. Italy, 1991, 83′
Having survived the killing of his family, twelve-year-old Vito, moves through the social tiers of drug selling, robbery, prostitution, and jail, where he sharpens his criminal career all the way to the Camorra. With a distressing and violent direct depiction of Naples’ stolen youth, Capuano’s debut film analyses the first Pasolini film for its forthright approach to reality. Capuano launched the Neapolitan New Wave with this film and won the Venice International Critics Week.

Wednesday, November 23, at 8.00 p.m.
TAINTED SOULS
by Matteo Botrugno and Daniele Coluccini . Italia, 2017, 108′
A choral film based on the novel by Walter Siti where the stories of ordinary people, criminals, and ruthless businessmen intersect each other. A vague, lifeless, and corrupt cynicism has replaced Pasolini’s Rome in spreading the osmosis of degradation and despair between the centre and the periphery.

Thursday, November 24, at 20.00
DON’T BE BAD
by Claudio Caligari. Italy, 2015, 100′
The Pasolinian boys of life (lost) “Ragazzi di vita” in the 1990s Rome suburbs. Caligari is a one-of-a-kind singer  of marginality. With the help of interpreters who are in a state of grace, Caligari investigates the shadowy corners of the city and the human soul.

PASOLINI E WARHOL
Friday, November 25, at 8.00 p.m.
Dacia Maraini and Alessandro Puppo introduce the event.
TRASH – THE NEW YORK WASTE
by Paul Morrissey. USA, 1970, 110′, Italian version
Paul Morrissey, the major character of Andy Warhol’s Factory, described the squalor of urban marginality, a horrific environment of drug addicts, transvestites, on which the statuesque and uncaring beauty of Joe Dallesandro shines. Pier Paolo Pasolini and Dacia Maraini edited the dialogue adaptation for the Italian language.

Saturday, November 26, at 20.00
SWEET MOVIE
by Dusan Makavejev. France, Germany, Canada, 1974, 90′, Italian version
The exiled Makavejev mocks both capitalism and Stalinism with an overflowing anarchist spirit in a sensual and provocative comedy that surpasses the extreme. Total anarchy, chaos, and insanity combined with purposeful terrible taste to frighten the bourgeois around the globe.

RAGAZZI DI VITA
Sunday, November 27, at 8.00 p.m.
BOYS CRY
by Fabio and Damiano D’Innocenzo. Italy, 2018, 96′
Two boys accidentally run over and kill a repentant from the “mala” (informer previously involved with the mafia), entering a vortex with no escape. This remarkable first film, which won critical acclaim at the Berlin Film Festival, reinterprets the criminal nightmare of our suburbs with significant ethical strain. Looking at Pasolini’s lesson, the directors dig into the flattened consciences of a youth poised between naivety and ferocity.

Tuesday, November 29, at 8.00 p.m.
LAND IN BETWEEN
by Matteo Garrone. Italy, 1996, 78′
Matteo Garrone’s debut is an episodic film documenting the footsteps of immigrants trying to survive. It leads us to explore Rome’s fringes, where we hear the conversation of Nigerian prostitutes waiting for clients, the exploits of two Albanians battling illegal work, and the night of an Egyptian working at a petrol station. The film demonstrates all of Garrone’s talent for depicting social change while striking a balance between fact and fiction.

Wednesday, November 30, at 8.00 p.m.
ROSETTA
by Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne. Belgium, France, 1999, 95 ‘, Italian version
Rosetta, who is terrified of being an outcast and lives in a camper with her alcoholic mother, commutes to the everyday city in search of a job. The two incredibly talented Belgian filmmakers stay close to the heroine’s body, causing us to feel her laboured breathing and the ferocious energy of her never-ending struggle against the merciless cynicism of the modern world. The film received the Best Actress Award and the Palme d’Or at Cannes.

TRA LETTERATURA E PITTURA
Thursday, December 1, at 8.00 p.m.
THE DECAMERON
by Pier Paolo Pasolini. Italy, France, Germany, 1971, 110′
This is the first part of what Pasolini will refer to as the “Trilogy of Life.” In comparison to the prior production, it clearly marks a turning point. It is a magnificent choral fresco that exalts people’s sexual freedom in an innocent and joyful dimension that is beyond time and morality. The film received the Silver Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival. In Italy, the film sparked controversy with charges of pornography and several imitations.

followed by
SET DI SANA’A (5′), an unpublished episode
The Walls of Sana’a
by Pier Paolo Pasolini. Italy, 1971, 13′
Pasolini makes this sincere plea to stop contemporary urbanisation from damaging the historic city of Sana’a while filming the Decameron in Yemen.

Friday, December 2, at 8.00 p.m.
THE CANTERBURY TALES
by Pier Paolo Pasolini. Italy, France, 1972, 111′
The second instalment of the trilogy, which is based on tales written by Geoffrey Chaucer around the end of the thirteenth century. The film wins the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival and causes national outrage for its shockingly intense and grim portrayal of the human body, which emphasises the intersection of eros, greed, sickness, and death.

Saturday, December 3, at 8.00 p.m.
OSTIA
by Julian Cole. United Kingdom, 1987, 26′
It is a unique homage to Pasolini by Derek Jarman, who interprets the poet and chronicles the night of his death amid surreal atmospheres and quotes from his literary works. It is set in London toward the end of the 1980s.

followed by
CARAVAGGIO
by Derek Jarman. United Kingdom, 1986, 93′, Italian version
Caravaggio’s wild and roving life, which included shady dealings with the powerful, fights, injuries, murders, homosexuality, and a romantic death. The colours, contrasts, and lighting of the painting are expertly recreated. A film about painting and love – an experimental biopic of an incomparable passionate and tragic force.

Sunday 4 December, at 8.00 pm
ARABIAN NIGHTS
by Pier Paolo Pasolini. Italy, France, 1974, 130′
The concluding and captivating chapter of the popular trilogy is characterised by a dreamlike tone, a string of tales that are controlled by the exaltation of a liberated, profound, and joyous sensual dimension that transcends the bounds of possession via the strength of emotions. It was screened at Cannes and won the Grand Jury Prize.

IL CASO LA RICOTTA
Tuesday, December 6, at 20.00
Francesca Angelucci introduce the event.
LA RICOTTA DIRECTOR’S CUT
(episode of the film RoGoPaG)
by Pier Paolo Pasolini. Italy, 1963, 38′

Thanks to the Cineteca Nazionale’s restoration of the sole surviving copy in the director’s original edition, one of the most persecuted movies in Italian cinema history is now available in “director’s cut” format. The original footage of Pasolini’s episode was discovered among a collection of film materials dumped in the railway yards. The original film shows scenes and lines that have subsequently been altered or removed.

LA MANIPOLAZIONE DEI CORPI
Wednesday, December 7, at 20.00
SALÒ, OR THE 120 DAYS OF SODOM
by Pier Paolo Pasolini. Italy, France, 1975, 116′

By portraying the torture and perversions that individuals in positions of authority inflict on the bodies of young captives in a villa lager, Pasolini levelled his harshest criticism of modern society and its false tolerance.The transposition of Sade’s horrors in Mussolini’s Italy of the Social Republic aims to draw attention to the present era, where the genocide carried out by society’s homologation has finally won.

Thursday 8 December, at 8.00 pm
PASOLINI PROSSIMO NOSTRO
by Giuseppe Bertolucci. Italy, France, 2006, 63′

The German journalist Gideon Bachmann conducts a lengthy interview with Pasolini on the Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom 1975 ‧ Drama/War ‧ 1h 57m set. The discussion eventually turns into a clear attack on society, and during the interview, Pasolini exposes all of his pessimism and sorrow acquired in recent years. Giuseppe Bertolucci layered the still photos from valuable, unreleased archives over this protracted debate footage to produce an unexpected reworking of one of the most shocking films of the 1970s.

Thanks to: ABKCO, Arrow Films, Centro Studi – Archivio Pier Paolo Pasolini di Bologna, Fondazione Cineteca di Bologna, Luce Cinecittà, Minerva Pictures and RaroVideo Channel, Morel Film, Notorius Pictures, Rai Teche, Ripley’s, Maria Iorio / Raphaël Cuomo, Kimera

INFO
Palazzo delle Esposizioni – Sala Cinema
scalinata in via Milano 9a, Rome
Free entry with reservation until seats are available

Bookings can be made on www.palazzoesposizioni.it starting the day before the screening at 9.00 a.m. and ending one hour before the projection. If you are unable to attend, please remember to cancel your reservation on the site so that others may participate. Please arrive 10 minutes before the start time; otherwise, the reservation will be cancelled, and the seat will be assigned to the public waiting at the entrance.