Dear Pier Paolo. Events and places to celebrate Pasolini’s centenary

Poetry, cinema, books, news. Pier Paolo Pasolini, a man of letters, films and theater. But also a figure whose intimate history is contaminated with chronicles, marked by a brutal end, and at the same time by an increasingly lively literary testament. Over the thousand definitions that tell of a dazzling and stormy earthly passage, closed in a violent and definitive way, the places remain.

Refuges of childhood and the last season of life. And the cities are the epicenter of success and maturity. This is why the centenary of Pier Paolo Pasolini’s birth becomes an opportunity for rediscovery. To reread Italy with his eyes and through his words. From Bologna to Casarsa, from Genoa to Rome, here are some of the places and events they will host to mark the centenary year.

Pier Paolo Pasolini, writer, poet, screenwriter and director, a complex intellectual who contributed to enriching the Italian and Friulian culture of the twentieth century was born in Bologna on 5 March one hundred years ago. Casarsa della Deliziathe place of origin of his mother where Pasolini spent many holidays, and Friuli Venezia Giulia are always present in the memories, in the bond with his mother, in the language, from the first poems in Friulian, published in 1942 to the first theatrical drama «I Turcs tal Friùl »(The Turks in Friuli) to the lagoon of Grado, where he shot some scenes of Medea with Maria Callas.

In Casarsa

For this the Pasolini Study Center it will be the heart of the events in the Northeast for the centenary. “Pasolini. Drawings in the Grado lagoon » is the exhibition with which all the initiatives kick off: the 20 drawings of the Grado lagoon, of which 9 unpublished, is the first entirely dedicated to the works created by Pasolini in the place where he shot the film Medeain 1969, with Maria Callas.

“On Pasolini’s places in Casarsa” is the book of guided tours that throughout 2022 will tell the special bond between Pasolini and Friuli. The itinerary comes to life, in fact, from the town where Pasolini spends a few years of his childhood and many summer holidays, but it is also the place where his soul rests, in the Casarsa cemetery, where he is buried next to his family. The itinerary includes some of the particularly significant places for Pasolini and his training: the maternal house, the Colussi house, the place where he lived between the end of 1942 and the beginning of 1950 and today the seat of the Pier Paolo Pasolini Study Center; the small church of Santa Croce, with the frescoes by Pomponio Amalteo, inside which there is the plaque commemorating the invasion of the Turks in Friuli in 1499 and which inspired the theatrical drama “I Turcs tal Friùl”; the small village of Versuta, with the beautiful church of Sant’Antonio Abate and a cycle of frescoes that Pasolini himself, helped by the boys of Casarsa, began to clean and restore; the small hamlet of San Giovanni di Casarsa, linked to the poet’s political commitment, and, finally, the poet’s tomb, in the Casarsa cemetery.

The show

It is called Pasolini Museum the new show by Ascanio Celestini on tour in the coming months. The actor explained his choice of title and the meaning of his homage in this way: «According to the International Council of Museums, the five functions of any museum are: research, acquisition, conservation, communication, exhibition. How could it be a museum dedicated to Pasolini? What would be the highlight? What object should we acquire from private or public collections, recover from some warehouse, landfill, library or lost property office? What are we required to do to keep it? How can we communicate through him? ». Through the testimonies of a historian, a psychoanalyst, a writer, a criminologist, a hypothetical museum dedicated to the great intellectual is composed. In this place of memory, a moving journey through the legacy of the great writer.

Rome for Pasolini

On 2 March, with an event at the Casa del Cinema, the celebrations in Rome, the capital, for the centenary of the birth of Pier Paolo Pasolini. At 5 pm there will be the presentation at the Casa del cinema di «Dear Pier Paolo», the ibro of Dacia Maraini, the last one alive to have attended him.

The Municipality of Rome will organize Pasolini alphabet: about twenty appointments in Roman libraries with the main scholars in Italy on key words that have characterized his work such as Friuli, body, politics, television.

Among the different projects on the bill One hundred years of Pasolinthethe XII Municipality of Rome organizes the Literary walks to Pasolini’s places. A week of cultural initiatives from 1st to Saturday 5th March for an interesting path of understanding and reflection on his thought and on his works, through the link with the territory.

Bologna

The Cineteca di Bologna with the exhibition Figurative electrocutions follows the traces that Bologna left in the formation of one of the most prophetic souls of our twentieth century, from his birth, on March 5, 1922, in via Borgonuovo, to the years of high school and university, with a teacher like Roberto Longhi who shaped his gaze by Pasolini and directed him towards a passion, that for figurative art, which will accompany him throughout his multifaceted creative path. A real shock. The exhibition is in the new exhibition spaces of the Sottopasso in Piazza Re Enzo, from 1 March to 16 October 2022.

Genoa

Until March 13, you can visit the Palazzo Ducale Pasolini – I am not moved by photographs which collects part of the endless photographic material about him: portraits on sets, in public and private life.