Pasolini torna a Garbatella - Pasolini back in Garbatella. Films and meetings

Born in Bologna in 1922, Pier Paolo Pasolini moved to Rome in 1950: until his murder, which took place in circumstances that have never been fully clarified on 2 November 1975, the city was the backdrop to his biography, his novels and then his film production.

The streets of Garbatella, for example, are the setting for the plot of “Una vita violenta” (A Violent Life), Pasolini’s second Roman novel, published in 1959, which recounts the shattered lives of young people in the suburbs. As part of the widespread “PPP Visionario” festival, with which the city commemorates the artist and intellectual 50 years after his tragic death, the working-class neighborhood built in the 1920s on the hills overlooking St Paul’s Basilica recounts his cinema and his figure with a series of meetings and films.

The events are organized by Villetta Social Lab and take place inside the Villetta, one of the few surviving medieval buildings in the neighborhood, which has been the historic local headquarters of the left-wing parties in the neighborhood since 1944. It was in this very building, on 28 September 1962, that Pasolini attended a screening of “Mamma Roma”, followed by a debate. The program for the first two days includes screenings of “Il Vangelo secondo Matteo” (The Gospel According to St. Matthew) (19 November, from 8.30 p.m.) and “Accattone” (20 November, from 8.30 p.m.), the film that marked his directorial debut.

On 21 November, the screening of “Mamma Roma” will be preceded by a discussion entitled “Pasolini luogo comune. Lemmi e luoghi dalle terre del poeta” (Pasolini: commonplace. Terms and places from the poet’s homeland) with Professor Ugo Fracassa (Roma Tre University), Laura Mancini (Repubblica) and Fabrizio Miliucci (MIUR lecturer). On 22 November, the reading “Poesia e responsabilità civile. Appunti su Pasolini educatore per una rivolta umanistica della scuola italiana” (Poetry and civil responsibility. Notes on Pasolini as an educator for a humanistic revolt in Italian schools) will precede the screening of “Una vita violenta”, the 1962 film directed by Paolo Heusch and Brunello Rondi, based on the novel of the same name.