UCLA Film & Television Archive kicks off Pasolini retrospective

By Susan King

July 31, 2013 12 AM PT

Pier Paolo Pasolini was one of Italian cinema’s most influential, controversial and iconoclastic filmmakers, arriving on the scene after neo-realists such as Vittorio De Sica and Roberto Rossellini.

The openly gay playwright, novelist, political theorist, journalist, teacher and poet made films in order to “represent reality with reality.”

UCLA Film & Television Archive’s new retrospective, “Pure and Impure: The Films of Pier Paolo Pasolini,” which opens Friday at the Billy Wilder Theater, features new prints from Istituto Luce Cinecitta in Rome. The series takes place in conjunction with “Pasolini’s East in Roberto Villa’s photographs,” which also opens Friday at the Italian Cultural Center of Los Angeles.

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Villa will appear in person Friday evening for the screening of Pasolini’s 1971 film “The Decameron,” the first in his “Trilogy of Life,” which also includes 1972’s “The Canterbury Tales” and 1974’s “The Arabian Knights,” which will screen Aug. 25.

On tap for Saturday are two of his most acclaimed films: 1961’s “Accattone” and 1962’s “Mamma Roma” with Anna Magnani.

Other films in the festival include 1964’s “The Gospel According to Matthew” and 1975’s shocking “Salo or the 120 Days of Sodom,” which was released after Pasolini’s brutal murder in 1975 at the age of 53.

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