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This article explores popular music in the films of Pier Paolo Pasolini. Pasolini conceived of two broad categories of popular music: folk music, which he understood to represent pre-capitalistic, pre-industrial cultures; and contemporary, radio-ready musical genres like pop and jazz, which he tied to bourgeois culture. I show how these two categories, like so many of Pasolini's categorical distinctions, were permeable, and explore his own role as mediator and transmitter of music. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pier Paolo Pasolini's death has been the subject of numerous works in media from cinema to graphic novels. Most focus on Pasolini's assassination, its murky political implications, and the events surrounding the last hours of his life. Although this copious material was generated in an effort to bring justice to his death, in most cases it has ended up underplaying the multilayered approach to death and authorship present in Pasolini's works. Here, I ask whether it is possible to consider Pasolini's death through lenses other than that of the events surrounding his murder. I consider two films: Glauber Rocha's last film, A Idade da Terra (The Age of the Earth, Brazil, 1980), and Fi Intidar Pasolini (Waiting for Pasolini, Morocco, 2007) realized by Daoud Aoulad-Syad. These Global South directors not only depart from a journalistic approach to Pasolini's death, they also reinvent, translate, and, to a certain extent, 'provincialize' it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a 1947 paper, John K. Wright proposed the term "geosophy" to capture "the study of geographical knowledge from any or all points of view," a discipline that would explore all "geographical ideas," both "true and false." This geosophy has led to a certain interest in parallel, imaginary or popular geographies. In the field of French-language geography, it will continue late in the day in a questioning of para-geographies produced by amateur or nonacademic geographers, rather close to certain Anglo-Saxon debates relating to popular geographies. His article attempts to reverse this point of view by turning these para-geographies into legitimate theories of space that are not recognized as such, as they are stated in a language other than that of science. It is a more poetic language, which resorts to allusion, implicit and imagery, whereas scientific writing prefers clarity, explicitness and factuality. As a result, these parallel geographies have not been elevated to the rank of a certain scientific dignity by the institution of geography and, more broadly, the sciences interested in the territory. I explore here some of Pier Paolo Pasolini's productions by focusing on the geographical knowledge of which they are both the product and the vector. To do so, I mobilize literary and film materials from his oeuvre. If Pasolini was not a researcher, as defined by academia, he was at least someone who was searching. His work, which aimed at broadening reflection on the way society functions, with a view toward its spatial organization, might have contributed to geographic knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article takes into consideration Pier Paolo Pasolini's La rabbia (1963). After briefly contextualising and matching it to the then-new genre of the found footage essay film, the article identifies precise points of contact between the text in which Pasolini first presented his film to the public and the first Italian translation of Walter Benjamin's Theses on the Philosophy of History. Proceeding from these findings, the article shows how Benjamin's work influenced Pasolini's film, in terms of both content and form. This influence is firstly traced in the film's main component, the contraposition of two voices, that of normalcy and ideology versus that of the author, which reflects Benjamin's thought on the task of the historical materialist. Secondly, contacts between Pasolini's film and Benjamin's Marxist and millenaristic conception of history are identified both in the structure of the film and in its framing and interpretation of the historical events selected. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Survivance des lucioles, Georges Didi-Huberman cites sections from a letter in which Pier Paolo Pasolini describes an encounter with a swarm of fireflies. The sight of the fireflies triggers reflections on various topics on the part of Pasolini. However, at the end of his life, Pasolini lamented the fact that fireflies had disappeared in modern society, serving as a metaphor for the fact that he had lost all hope in the consumerist society in which he was living. Pasolini’s reflections on fireflies illustrate Georges Didi-Huberman’s theories on the current state and politics of images in contemporary society. In this article, several key features of the politics of images, according to Didi-Huberman, are clarified, in particular, the role of pathos and imagination. It is on the role of pathos and imagination that Didi-Huberman’s views will diverge from the theories of other prominent theorists of images, such as Jacques Rancière, Roland Barthes, W.J.T. Mitchell and Bruno Latour. By clarifying these diverging views, the theories of Didi-Huberman can be formulated more precisely. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

L’intervista a Edoardo Albinati, all’indomani del conferimento del premio Strega, è incentrata sulla articolata struttura dell’opera La scuola cattolica (2016), in cui lo scrittore rilegge la storia degli anni Settanta alla luce del delitto del Circeo (1975). In particolare, l’autore riflette attraverso alcune precise e talora provocatorie spiegazioni sul problema della forma dell’opera, sulla natura dell’autofiction e infine sulla funzione della letteratura per l’individuo e la società. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on the representation of fatherhood in Pier Paolo Pasolini’s tragedy Porcile. It draws on Lacanian psychoanalysis, specifically on Massimo Recalcati’s interpretation, and on Lacan’s theories about the weakening of fathers and of the reconfiguration of father-son relationships in late-modern society. The article demonstrates how, by refusing to accept or reject paternal authority, the protagonist Julian undermines the two typical approaches to fatherhood consolidated by the patriarchal tradition and thereby alerts us to the impossibility of perpetuating the traditional model of fatherhood in late-modern society. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article analyzes the drawings that Pier Paolo Pasolini made for his short film, La terra vista dalla luna, in 1967. Pasolini originally intended to publish his sketches in a comic book that, in the end, he did not complete. These drawings eschew any clear-cut definition. They are an attempt at a comic book, but they also visualize Pasolini’s screenplay so closely that they could be the film’s storyboard. Whether they are functional to the film or conceived to tell the same story in a different medium, these drawings represent a residual text that sheds light on Pasolini’s conversion to the figurative arts. His hand-drawn images investigate the function of colour, while exemplifying Pasolini’s observations on linguistic contamination, the merging of high- and lowbrow expressive forms, free indirect style and the new literarymonstrarepresented by hybrid narrative structures. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

L’ultimo incompiuto di Pier Paolo Pasolini,Petrolio, rappresenta una sfida formale e contenutistica al potere, all’individuo borghese, al critico dell’establishment. Sistematica unicamente nel suo disordine, quest’opera rivela ad uno scrutinio più attento la sua natura intenzionalmente infinita piuttosto che incompiuta: Pasolini traccia uno schizzo non solo delle connivenze politiche e collusioni intellettuali del potere economico nell’Italia del secondo dopoguerra, ma alterna alla cronaca il racconto fantastico, il mistero religioso, la fiaba e, soprattutto, la parabola erotica. In una riflessione che molto ha in comune con il pensiero di Michel Foucault e Giorgio Agamben, l’autore individua nel corpo l’oggetto sacro di tale potere.Petroliotestimonia di una violenta opposizione che si traduce letterariamente in un anti-romanzo, un romanzo “esploso,” rizomatico, trasversale a generi letterari e registri linguistici. Il presente contributo analizza l’alterità diPetrolionon solo nei termini di reazione poetica alle mutate condizioni sociali italiane ma, soprattutto, come viaggio meta-diegetico e anti-biopolitico dell’autore e di chi lo legge nei luoghi oscuri della cultura borghese, in una sessualità estatica che, lungi dall’essere pretesto per divagazioni lubriche, diventa perno di una resistenza la quale, per sfuggire all’egemonia del Discorso, sceglie la forma carsica di un misticismo impuro. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This essay analyses Accattone (1961), the first film of Italian director, poet, and novelist Pier Paolo Pasolini. Specifically, we ground our reading of Accattone in a nuanced, culture-specific understanding of fluid gender relations in the culture of post-war Roman slums. We argue that, to date, the significance of the female characters in Accattone has been underappreciated. Our essay attempts to fill that gap in the literature by examining the central roles women play in Pasolini's first film. Indeed, the female characters create and delimit the world in which Accattone, the main male character, lives. Central to their importance to the plot is the gender fluidity and performativity of the women, as well as Accattone. We contend that the female characters perform complex identities that fuse motherhood, prostitution, and womanhood. We demonstrate how their identities necessarily contain a strongly historicized and cultured motherly element, which facilitates the poverty-stricken borgate and enables continuity of life in the Eternal City. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pier Paolo Pasolini ha contribuito in maniera tutt'altro che marginale alla scrittura de Le notti di Cabiria (1957) di Federico Fellini. Non si limitò a riscrivere i dialoghi del film, come in genere si crede per la qualifica di collaboratore ai dialoghi che gli fu attribuita. Fellini fece invece ricorso alle capacità critiche e al talento letterario di Pasolini per rielaborare la struttura narrativa del film nel suo complesso. Per Le notti di Cabiria Pasolini corregge dialoghi e descrizioni, suggerisce di eliminare o ampliare intere scene, alcune delle quali riscrive di sana pianta, e crea personaggi a cui Fellini e i suoi sceneggiatori non avevano pensato. L'intensa collaborazione di Pasolini alla sceneggiatura del film di Fellini sarà determinante per lo sviluppo della poetica di entrambe gli autori. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Kechiche treats dialogue with particular care in his first four films, reducing improvisation by the actors to a minimum. This article will analyse the way in which Kechiche subtly weaves different registers of the French language alongside disparate elements coming from slang and foreign languages. This analysis will be placed in contexts of enunciation, including mise-en-scène, the direction of the actors, the characterization, and the director's own relationship with the French language. Pasolini's notion of pasticciaccio will illuminate the way in which the different linguistic elements combine, as well as the socio-political aspects of the dialogue, which are emphasized by the director's mise-en-scène. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Wang Bing's Jiabiangou/The Ditch premiered as a competition entry at the Venice Film Festival 2010 after a six-year-long production process. It is Wang Bing's first full-length feature film after he established his reputation as a leading documentary film-maker on the international film scene thanks to the worldwide acclaimed Tiexi qu/West of the Tracks (2002) and He Fengming (2007). This article provides a reading of The Ditch (2010), based on a contextual investigation of the interplay of documentary and fiction, an high-end film aesthetics, and Wang Bing's concern with the role of the film-maker vis-à-vis a sensitive historical subject, here the Anti-rightist movement (1957-1960). Comolli's discussion of historical films and Pasolini's approach to cinema as a way to engage with the present provide relevant theoretical basis for this study. Parallels are drawn with Pedro Costa's work which also moves away from cinematic realism to challenge the boundaries of representation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

L'impegno degli intellettuali italiani fu quasi la norma quando ad esso corrispondeva l'egemonia di partiti politici incentrati su contrastanti ideologie. Quella stagione è finita per varie ragioni, fra cui emergono la svalutazione del merito individuale, la fine del sistema dei partiti dopo gli anni di 'Mani Pulite', una pessima legge elettorale, e il tramonto dell'idea e dell'etica del bene comune. Nell'Italia di oggi, il nuovo fronte per l'impegno intellettuale non può essere un ritorno al passato: passa, necessariamente, attraverso una ricostruzione dei valori etici incarnati dalla Costituzione della Repubblica, e richiede una piena identificazione dell'intellettuale con il suo ruolo primario di cittadino, ma anche la sua capacità di contribuire, con altri cittadini, alla ricostruzione del bene comune e dell'etica pubblica. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article I aim to show that, in their discussion of the possible biopolitical implications of the notion of birth, Pier Paolo Pasolini and Roberto Esposito share a similar vitalist notion of life. Both authors start off from the very same premise: before and outside of any symbolic (political and legal) constraining imposition on life, life is in itself a life as a unity of difference – a place of blind forces or a primordial intensity – that is as such sacredly blessed. On the one hand, Esposito's analysis of birth as an affirmative biopolitical category can help us unveil the thanatopolitical implications of Pasolini's critique of Italian legislation on abortion in so far as he resolutely condemns any discourse on the alleged degeneration of life. On the other, this very analysis is compromised by Esposito's own Christian stance on life. In the final part of this paper, I argue that inasmuch as Esposito conceives birth as "the actual place in which a life makes itself two," such a blessed One of difference presupposes a stance on the transcendent differentiality of life and legal obligation towards it that follows closely John Paul II's encyclical letter Evangelium Vitae. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fabio Mauri's performance Intellettuale, on May 31 1975, was an event intended to comment on Pasolini's life and work as a public intellectual. Taking this happening as a key to Pasolini's aesthetics and politics, this article discusses Pasolini's Gospel film in the light of the director's interest in the meaningful body, which he saw exemplified in the signing body of the deaf. A closer look at the film's aesthetic and its theoretical backing in Pasolini's "Il 'cinema di poesia'" reveals it as a polemical answer to the cultural project of body art. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the late Pasolini's complex investigations of jouissance and revolt by combining an analysis of Porcile (both the 1969 film and the homonymous theatrical piece) with the essay 'Il cinema impopolare', as well as by drawing on Lacan's psychoanalytic theory, with a particular emphasis on his interpretation of the tragedy Antigone. The article argues that Porcile illustrates that complicity with power is embedded at such a deep level in the human psyche so as to be constitutive of eros and subjectivity. While jouissance alone fails to inaugurate a dimension beyond the sway of power, I also suggest that Pasolini's conceptual torsions in the essay 'Il cinema impopolare' provide a modality of suspension of all libidinal investment in the law and its transgression, thus undermining their connivance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pasolini warned that petit bourgeoisie ideas were forming a new Italian youth characterized by nihilism, violence and self-destructiveness. Revisiting Pasolini pessimism by The Best of Youth, Giordana, Petraglia and Rulli show how an Italian generation coped with petit bourgeoisie culture and education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through an analysis of Pasolini's works (films and texts), this article aims to criticise the Western vision of history as a linear or circular transcendental model. In this vision Pasolini's images replace a praxis of creation, according to which the sense of Western history (as history of sense) changes itself in a different way in consideration of spaces and times, causing to appear on the surface of historical narrations the cracks of a different articulation, in which a vision of history as active process of creative interpretation supplants the classical vision of history as a totality of data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay analyzes the visual conditions underlying the torture photographs of Abu Ghraib. He looks into the codes in each photos as well as its technologies, conventions, aesthetics and visual archives which enable acts of torture and their visual representation. Then he examines these points of interaction between the techno-politico-military power and visual regimes of subjugation, violence and torture by placing the photos within orientalist, fascist and white supremacist shadow archives.

The aim of this article is to investigate the theoretical implications of Pier Paolo Pasolini's documentaries. By focusing specifically on three of his non-fictional works (La rabbia, Appunti per un'Orestiade africana and 12 dicembre), I have tried to examine Pasolini's controversial attempt to rescue the term 'realism' from its epochal disgrace. My central contention is that, against today's typically postmodern prescription to dismiss realist aesthetics, Pasolini's documentaries should be interpreted as ideologically informed efforts to preserve not only a specifically chosen dimension of the real, but more importantly a dimension of the real that defies discoursive appropriation. While in the 1960s and 1970s film theory was progressively turning its back on the classic realist text and concentrating increasingly on questions of self-reflexivity, with the intention of debunking the reactionary nature of any hypostitized representation of outer reality, Pasolini, defending his own notion of mimetic realism, refused to liquidate cinema's potential to imitate what exists outside. On the contrary, in a manner reminiscent of Lacan, he strove to recuperate to semiotic analysis the emphasis on the non-symbolic and constitutionally non-conceptual fixity of the Real's most hidden dimension. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]