To mark the occasion of the centenary of the birth of Pier Paolo Pasolini, Cinecittà and the Academy Museum present a comprehensive retrospective of the films of the Friulian artist, promoted in collaboration with the Italian Cultural Institute of Los Angeles. This is the first major event to come out of the partnership signed by Cinecittà with the Academy Museum, which provides for the regular programming of reviews, exhibitions and activities dedicated to Italian cinema over the next five years, reflecting the more than twenty-year relationship between the two institutions.
The review, entitled ‘Carnal Knowledge: The Films of Pier Paolo Pasolini’, will take place from 17 February to 12 March and will be made possible thanks to the almost exclusive use of precious 35mm prints made by Cinecittà, including some shorts and documentaries. The retrospective covers the three main periods of Pasolini’s work: his reinvention of Italian neorealism as a powerfully lyrical vehicle for portraying modern life (‘Accattone’, ‘Mamma Roma’), his scabrous portraits of the depravity of European society (‘Teorema’, ‘Pigsty’), his shocking ‘Trilogy of life’, a celebration of the primal pleasures of sex, set in antiquity, and the first part of what was to be the ‘Trilogy of Death’, namely ‘Salò or the 120 Days of Sodom’, a devastating and grim horror show set in the Second World War.