In remembrance to Pasolini’s birth on February 29, 2024., at the Art+ Cinema, operated by the Pannónia Entertainment Ltd. organizing a series of festive retrospective screenings.
Pier Paolo Pasolini was an Italian poet, film director, writer, screenwriter, actor and playwright. He is considered one of the defining public intellectuals in 20th-century Italian history, influential both as an artist and a political figure. He started filming only at the age of thirty-nine. He sublimated his own personal questions, thus leaving us a round, rich, versatile legacy. Many still to-day do not understand his art and sarcasm.
The Trilogy of Life is the summary title of Pier Paolo Pasolini’s three films shot between 1970 and 1974: The Decameron, The Canterbury Tales, The Thousand and One Nights Flowers. All three works are based on classic collections of fairy tales and short stories created in the Middle Ages. Italian censorship also banned the Decameron and the Canterbury Tales for a while. The music consultant for the trilogy was Ennio Morricone. The powerful atmosphere of the films is largely due to the authentic filming locations and the mostly amateur actors.
Based on the well-known collection of short stories by Giovanni Boccaccio, the Italian-French-GSR co-production Decameron, presented in 1971, received the Silver Bear Award (special jury award) at the 1971 West Berlin Film Festival.
The Canterbury Tales, an Italian-French co-production presented in 1972 and shot based on Geoffrey Chaucer’s fragmentary collection of fairy tales, partly finished in verse, received the Golden Bear Award (the festival’s grand prize) at the 1972 West Berlin Film Festival.
Based on the well-known Arabic collection, Tales of the Thousand and One Nights, the Italian-French feature film with the same title, shown in 1974, won the special jury prize at the 1974 Cannes Film Festival.
All 3 films are therefore based on an important, recognized work that is still included in our literary canon. While the first two are basically related to the Greek-Judeo-Christian cultural circle; in the 3rd. is embedded in Indus, Persian, ancient Mesopotamian, Jewish, ancient Egyptian, but mainly Arab beliefs and motifs.
It is interesting that Pasolini himself plays Chaucer and Giotto in the Canterbury Tales. In Decameron, the famous director thinks about the nature of our everyday sins and the origin of our guilt. “We have been repeating the same historical crimes for three thousand years, and this strengthens the suspicion that all of this follows from our culture.” – Cheyk: Utt
Pasolini’s last work, Salò, or the 120 days of Sodom, was created as the first chapter of an “anti-trilogy”.
Pasolini films at the Art+ Cinema from February 29 for four days.
Screening dates … February, 29. 8.30 p.m. – Salo, or 120 days of Sodom, March, 1. 8.30 – Decameron, March, 2. 8.30 – Canterbury Tales, March, 3. 8:30 p.m. – Flowers of the Thousand and One Nights
Update by Aggie Reiter
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