Pasolini 100
Pier Paolo Pasolini was born one hundred years ago, on the 5th of March, 1922. To celebrate his centenary, several screenings, programs and exhibitions are organised in Belgium and abroad.
In Belgium, Pasolini’s Accattone will be screened twice in the context of the Classics Restored film festival. On 4 March in KASKcinema, Ghent, with an introduction by Guy Borlée, who leads the Cineteca di Bologna in Pasolini’s hometown; on the 13th of March in BUDA in Kortrijk.
From 4 March to 18 April, in Brussels, CINEMATEK organises an exhibition and a film program that consists of both a retrospective of Pasolini’s feature films as well as films he worked on as a (co-)screenwiter. For the exhibition, contro-corrente. In the footsteps of Pier Paolo Pasolini, Brussels-based French visual artist Chantal Vey traveled the reverse road Pasolini describes in his book La lunga strada di sabbia, which coincides with his film Comizi d’Amore. Later on this year, Amsterdam-based publisher Octavo will publish a translation of Georges Didi-Huberman’s Survivance des lucioles, which responded to Pasolini’s texts on the appearance of the fireflies under Mussolini’s searchlights (1941) and the disappearance of the fireflies in the bright light of the society of the spectacle (1975). Pieter Van Bogaert wrote the afterword for the Dutch translation. In CINEMATEK, he will program four short films of Brussels’ own Mieriën Coppens and Elie Maissin on 24 March. Searching for what brings Pasolini’s fireflies back to life today, says Van Bogaert, he arrived at the films of the duo.
Still in Belgium, the Festival Internatial du Film de Mons is paying hommage to the Italian filmmaker and poet by organising a symposium as well as two screenings on the 12th of March. Hervé Joubert-Laurencin will present his “collective dictionary” Tout Pasolini during the symposium. Among the other speakers is Paul Magnette, the socialist mayor of Charleroi, who will bring a text called « Pasolini, penser la politique en poète ». Abel Ferrara’s film Pasolini will be screened in the presence of the filmmaker, who gives a masterclass on the same day.
In France, the Festival La Rochelle Cinéma (FEMA) is celebrating its own fiftieth birthday alongside Pasolini’s centenary from 1 to 10 July. They will present his entire cinematographic work, both short and feature films, as well as films on which he collaborated (by Cecilia Mangini and Luciano Emmer) and films dedicated to Pasolini by Abel Ferrara, Marco Tullio Giordana, Gianluigi Toccafondo and Andrei Ujica.
In Italy, the Cineteca di Bologna pays tribute to the filmmaker with an exhibition, a conference, two publications, an integral retrospective and the distribution throughout Italy of a selection of his films. At the central stage of the festivities is the exhibition, Pier Paolo Pasolini. Folgorazioni figurative. It follows the trace that Bologna left in the formation of the filmmaker, from his birth in the via Borgonuovo, to his years of high school and university. The exhibition runs from March 1 to October 16. On March 3, a conference will be held in the Archiginnasio library. From 1 to 30 March, a Pasolini Festival organised at the Cinema Lumière will not only feature an integral retrospective, but also a selection of works that have marked and influenced Pasolini’s cinema as well as films by directors who were in turn influenced by Pasolini. On top of all that, in the context of its project “Il Cinema Ritrovato al cinema” and in collaboration with the Cineteca Nazionale, the Cineteca di Bologna will distribute thirteen films by Pasolini to cinemas throughout the country.
In Spain, Pasolini’s relationship with the small screen inspired the FilmoTeca de Catalunya to put together a film program that focusses on the confrontation between cinema and television. In 1966 Pasolini published an article in which he charged against the small box in the living room, which did not stop him from using the medium as a speaker for his thought or as a complement to his films. The FilmoTeca will be projecting some of Pasolini’s best-known feature films as well as his own and other people’s notes on television, interviews and material that dialogues with his poetic cinema.
Online, too, the life and works of Pasolini are celebrated. Under the title “The Gospel According to Pier Paolo Pasolini”, Criterion is screening a selection of his work: Il bell’Antonio (1960), Mamma Roma (1962), La ricotta (1962), Love Meetings (1964), The Gospel According to St. Matthew (1964), The Witches (1967), Teorema (1968), Porcile (1969), The Decameron (1971), The Canterbury Tales (1972) and Arabian Nights (1974).
