Pier Paolo Pasolini

The seventieth anniversary of Pasolini's birth has been celebrated at the recently modernized Palazzo delle Esposizioni in Rome with a month-long projection of his films, an exhibition of stills, video clips of his obiter dicta (hard to hear), and a recital of his poetry by a leading member of the Pasolini team, the fine actress and singer in the Brecht tradition, Laura Betti.

The penultimate floor of the Palazzo has been restructured by the architect Enzo Serrani to present an introduction to Pasolini's work, under the title Figuratività e Figurazione. In the central part stills in black and white from his films were paired with passages of his verse, which the visitor glimpsed through gauze screens standing for 'the separation of poetry from reality'. In the smaller rooms there were enlarged photographs of the poet and his family, costumes worn. by Maria Callas in the film Medea and four of the cineaste's pictures.

The cinema, where not only the major works but documentaries and interviews were shown, was packed for the whole month of the exhibition; there was no advance booking and a considerable queue - or rather an impatient mass of people, mostly young, gathered at the box office in the entrance hall every day.

All this was organized by the Fondo Pasolini, founded in 1979 at the Gramsci Institute under the presidency of Alberto Moravia, and now directed by Laura Betti and the critic Enzo Siciliano, close friends of the late cineaste.
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