Where and when
From
To
Orario
17:30
Museo Novecento
Wednesday 11 November at 5.30pm
“La ricotta” di Pasolini: un film maledetto?
Meeting with Francesco Galluzzi and film screening
Introduced by Marino Demata, Rive Gauche-ArteCinema
La ricotta is a short film by Pasolini, part of the episode film ROGOPAG (from the names of the directors of the four episodes: Roberto Rossellini, Jean-Luc Godard, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Ugo Gregoretti). The film was at the center of a sensational judicial affair that ended with the sentencing of the director to four months imprisonment on conditional for “vilification of the state religion” and with the seizure of the work. The whole affair ended with the acquittal on appeal in May 1964 because the fact did not constitute a crime. Ricotta is the story of an attempt to make a film about the life of Christ. Pasolini’s originality consists in juxtaposing and juxtaposing in a way that is often deliberately strident and desecrating two planes of narration: on the one hand the squalid events of the troupe, the plethora of hungry extras (first of all the good thief with the very significant name Stracci) and the actors with their often grotesque whims, the other scenes on the passion of Christ, where Pasolini tries to reproduce in a tableau vivant the depositions of Pontormo and Rosso Fiorentino. The gap between the two narrative planes is obtained through the use of black and white for the scenes of the set and color for those on the Passion. It is a frontal attack on the bourgeois world, supported also by the words of Orson Welles who in the film plays the director interviewed by a journalist: the average man “is a monster, a dangerous criminal, conformist, racist, slave driver, apolitical…”.
The film screening will be introduced by Marino Demata, President of Rive Gauche-ArteCinema. At the end of the screening Francesco Galluzzi will focus on the relationship between Pasolini’s filmography and art history. The masterpieces of Pontormo and Rosso Fiorentino, which inspired La ricotta, as well as the suggestions of Caravaggio in several films (think of Mamma Roma) represent the rich imagination of Pasolini, nourished by the lesson of the master Roberto Longhi.
Francesco Galluzzi
Historian and art critic, he has repeatedly dealt with the presence of references to the visual arts in the work of Pasolini. In particular, he published the volume Pasolini e la pittura (1994). He recently published an essay on the film’s historical and artistic background in the dossier attached to the French translation of Accattone’s screenplay (2015).
Friday, November 20 at 5.30pm
“Appunti per un’Orestiade africana” by Pasolini: an unexpected film
Meeting with Franco Zabagli and film screening
Introduced by Marino Demata, Rive Gauche-ArteCinema
Appunti per un’Orestiade africana is a 1970 documentary film directed by Pasolini, edited from material shot in Africa for a film inspired by Eschilo’s Orestiade. The work is part of a larger project, so described by Pasolini: “I had to shoot that film in different countries of the Third World […] It was therefore a kind of documentary, of essay.” The Notes are ideally divided into three parts: a travel documentary in Uganda and Tanzania, a debate between Pasolini and the African students of La Sapienza University, the Jazz Concert by Yvonne Murray and Archie Savage at the Folkstudio in Rome. The film was successfully presented in Venice in September 1973 as part of the Italian Film Days. According to Alberto Moravia the film “[… ] is one of the most beautiful of Pasolini. Never conventional, never picturesque, the documentary shows us an authentic Africa, not at all exotic and therefore all the more mysterious than the mystery of existence, with its vast prehistoric landscapes, its miserable villages inhabited by a primitive peasant humanity, its two or three modern cities already industrial and proletarian. Pasolini ‘feels’ black Africa with the same poetic and original sympathy with which at the time he felt the villages and the Roman underclass”.
The screening will be introduced by Franco Zabagli with Marino Demata.
Franco Zabagli
He works at the Gabinetto Vieusseux in Florence, where for several years he edited the archive of the manuscripts of Pier Paolo Pasolini. Philologist and scholar of Italian literature, he has written numerous essays; in particular on Leopardi, Pascoli, Montale, Pasolini, published in “Paragone”, “Nuovi Argomenti”, “Il Ponte” and other magazines. He has worked on the complete edition of the cinematographic writings of Pier Paolo Pasolini in the “Meridians” Mondadori and, again for Mondadori, on the volume of the Letters to Clizia by Eugenio Montale. For some years he has dedicated himself to drawing, calligraphy and collage. He exhibited his works in the exhibitions Sediments and tears (Florence, Libreria Babele, October 2011), and Papiers trouvés (Florence, Galleria Immaginaria, April-May 2015).
Marino Demata
Former professor of philosophy, is President of the association Rive Gauche – ArteCinema for which organizes events, conferences and cycles of projections. Author of the essay Il destino nel cinema e nella realtà, in Lo sguardo critico per la rivista “Nuovo Fedic Notizie”, is working on the publication of the novel I due soli, storia di un affermato regista in crisi creativa, and an extensive essay on the films dreamed and never made by the most important directors around the world.
Association of film culture and art, Rive Gauche-ArteCinema operates in Florence where he has curated numerous exhibitions and screenings including those related to the New Latin American Cinema, Turkish cinema, Xavier Dolan and the Eastern world. In 2014 he organized in collaboration with the University of Florence a study day for the 50th anniversary of “The Gospel according to Matthew” by Pasolini. He is currently editing a series of experimental films.