ARABIAN NIGHTS
Italy/France, 1974
Original title: Il fiore delle mille e una notte
Director: Pier Paolo Pasolini. Screenplay: Pier Paolo Pasolini, from ‘Le mille e una notte’. Screenplay collaborator: Dacia Maraini. Art director: Dante Ferretti. Cinematographer: Giuseppe Ruzzolini. Editor: Nino Baragli, Tatiani Casini Morigi. Film score: Ennio Morricone. Sound manager: Luciano Welisch. Costume designer: Danilo Donati. Cast and characters: Franco Merli (Nur ed Din), Ines Pellegrini (Zumurrud), Ninetto Davoli (Aziz), Tessa Bouché (Aziza), Franco Citti (the Genie), Abadit Ghidei (Princess Dunja). Production: PEA (Roma) Les Productions Artistes Associés (Parigi).Lenght: 129’.
Format: DCP. Source: Cineteca di Bologna under licence from Park Circus.
Original version. Subtitles: English
The last film in the Trilogy of Life is also the one where perhaps the sense of Pasolini’s utopia is most poetically expressed, evoking a popular and fantastic dimension where sex is experienced with free ruthlessness in a magical, violent and intact past. A choral story that praises life and feelings, inspired by Arab fairy tales and filmed in Ethiopia, Yemen, Iran and Nepal.
“The main source of inspiration is a critical reading of the ‘Thousand and One Nights’. Strange critical reading. In fact, I am not competent in Arabic literature, nor in Arabic history. Is the critical literature of a text possible outside of any form of historicism? Evidently not. But there is some compensation. For example my existential knowledge of the Arab world. I can say that I know the Arabs more than the people from Milan. I was therefore able to historicize the Thousand and One Nights for what they are now in their popular context. ” (Pier Paolo Pasolini)
Monday 02 May 2022, h. 9:00 pm
