Difficulty: Advanced
Italy
Pasolini talks about his first book of poetry and what he realized about his country when it was published in 1942. He explains why reviewers wouldn't touch it.
Difficulty: Advanced
Italy
Pasolini talks about the Italian language and how it has been transformed over the years.
Difficulty: Advanced
Italy
Pasolini talks about how artists are always controversial. They are a living protest. His protest involves language and national identity.
Difficulty: Adv-Intermediate
Italy
Pasolini talks about how he moved from literature to cinema, and how his ideas about language changed. He talked about providing Italians with an opportunity to demonstrate racism, perhaps for the first time, with his movie, Accattone.
Difficulty: Advanced
Italy
In this segment, we're on the set with Pasolini as he shouts directions to Totò through his megaphone, and at the same time discusses the shoot with his crew. Naturally, authenticity often means people speak over each other, so it's hard to understand what is said. Then, Pasolini is asked by a journalist about his views on neorealism and here, the speech is clearer (and interesting), so don't give up!
Difficulty: Adv-Intermediate
Italy
Pasolini is asked what he thinks about progress and development. He is also asked about the inspiration he seems to have taken from subjects of the New Testament of the Bible.
Difficulty: Advanced
Italy
Pasolini doesn't want to talk about his enemies, but does talk about the people he loves the most: simple folk, who might not have even finished grade school. For his early films, he took inspiration from Antonio Gramsci.
Difficulty: Advanced
Italy
In a Q & A, Pasolini explains to a journalist what he means when he refers to the elite. In another clip, he asks people on the beach about sex.
Difficulty: Advanced
Italy
Still on the beach, Pasolini asks more people their opinions on divorce, which became legal in 1970. The second part of this segment is part of a 1969 episode of Processo alla tappa, a TV talk show devoted to the Giro d'Italia (the Tour of Italy), a famous, 21-stage bike race.
Difficulty: Advanced
Italy
Pasolini explains the difficulty of framing a city through the lens, only for it to be ruined by modern buildings that seem to have nothing to do with the form of the city itself. He wants anonymous, simple poetry to be preserved just like the works of Dante and Petrarca.
Difficulty: Advanced
Italy
Pasolini talks about the gates to the city of Orte. They may be simple, and built by unnamed men, but that doesn't mean they don't have value to protect. He moves on to talk about Sabaudia, a city built by the fascist regime, on reclaimed marshland, roughly halfway between Rome and Naples.
Difficulty: Advanced
Italy
Pier Paolo Pasolini discusses the effects Fascism had on Italy. He talks about the city of Sabaudia, built by the fascist government on the reclaimed marshland of the ancient Pontine Marshes (Agro Pontino) and how later, what took hold was the culture of consumerism.
Difficulty: Advanced
Italy
As the credits role in this final segment, we hear a song written and performed by Fabrizio De André (together with Massimo Bubola. Una storia sbagliata (a story all wrong) was commissioned for a 1980 TV show about Pasolini's death, called Dietro il processo (behind the trial). You can hear the entire song here, while here you'll find the complete lyrics in Italian.
Difficulty: Intermediate
Italy
Borgo Sansepolcro is an out-of-the-way Tuscan city. But, as this video sets out to explain, it boasts one of the most beautiful paintings in the world, so it is well worth the journey. The video begins with some passages from a 1925 essay by Aldous Huxley: “The Best Picture.” We have translated the Italian translation back into English, for learning purposes, but you can find the original English version here.
Difficulty: Intermediate
Italy
The host describes the fascinating story of a British army captain who, during World War II, happened to have read Aldous Huxley's words (quoted in the previous segment), and remembered them just in time.
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