ShangOrama.com presents #14 :
Pier Paolo Pasolini's 'Trilogy of Life'!!!
Decameron - Canterbury Tales - Arabian Nights
Pasolini (Bologna 1922 - Roma 1975) is my favourite European director of all-time... R.I.P.
In-person: our ever-popular programmer U of T lecturer Carlo Coen (Mario Bava nights) doing the film intros!!!
NB: We will be selling OM memberships between 5pm - 3am.
Saturday, May 31, 2008 9pm - 4am @Majlis Artspace ( special doors open at 5pm )
:
9:00pm - Pasolini's life'n'times by Carlo Coen ( overview & films )
9:15pm - La Ricotta ( Curd chesse: 1963, 33' )
10:00pm - The Decameron ( Il Decameron: 1971 )
12:00eh - The Canterbury Tales ( I racconti di Canterbury: 1972 )
2:00am - Arabian Nights ( Il fiore delle mille e una notte: 1974
"Cinema is identical to life, because each one of us has a virtual and invisible camera which follows us from when we're born to when we die. In reality cinema is an infinite film sequence-shot. Each individual film interrupts and rearranges this infinite sequence-shot and thus creates meaning, which is what happens to us when we die. It is only at our moment of death that our life, to that point undecipherable, ambiguous, suspended, acquires a meaning. Montage thus plays the same role in cinema as death does in life."--- Pier Paolo Pasolini (Cineforum: 68 October 1967, p. 609)
"Pier Paolo Pasolini achieved fame and notoriety long before he entered the film industry. A published poet at 19, he had already written numerous novels and essays before his first screenplay in 1954. His first film Accattone (1961) was based on his own novel and its violent depiction of the life of a pimp in the slums of Rome caused a sensation. He was arrested in 1962 when his contribution to the portmanteau film Ro.Go.Pa.G. (1963) was considered blasphemous and given a suspended sentence. It might have been expected that his next film, Il Vangelo secondo Matteo (The Gospel According to St. Matthew: 1964), which presented the Biblical story in a totally realistic, stripped-down style, would cause a similar fuss but, in fact, it was rapturously acclaimed as one of the few honest portrayals of Christ on screen. (Its original Italian title pointedly omitted the Saint in St. Matthew). Pasolini's film career would then alternate distinctly personal and often scandalously erotic adaptations of classic literary texts: Edipo re (Oedipus Rex: 1967); Il Decameron (1971); I Racconti di Canterbury (The Canterbury Tales: 1972); Il Fiore delle mille e una notte (Arabian Nights: 1974), with his own more personal projects, expressing his controversial views on Marxism, atheism, fascism and homosexuality, notably Teorema (Theorem: 1968), Pigsty and the notorious Salò o le 120 giornate di Sodoma (1975), a relentlessly grim fusion of Benito Mussolini's Fascist Italy with the 'Marquis de Sade' which was banned in Italy and many other countries for several years. Pasolini was murdered in still-mysterious circumstances shortly after completing the film." - (IMDB)
"Pasolini's next films would be the three elegant literary adaptations of The Decameron (1971), The Canterbury Tales (1972) and Arabian Nights (1974), which he would group together under the title of the "Trilogy of Life" and which he would originally characterize as his most "non-political" films. Lavish in their costumes and settings and splendidly-photographed, with non-professionals chosen, as in the borgate days, for their stunningly-expressive faces and powerful screen presences, these were thoroughly "consumable" films and in fact provided Pasolini with his greatest ever commercial success. Later on, contrary as ever, Pasolini would suggest that, in another way, these were also his "most political" films, the politics here being not ideological but sexual, there in the erotic, sexually-energised human body which was being everywhere celebrated in these films and which Pasolini claimed was the only site to have yet escaped domination by consumer capitalism. However, the runaway commercial success and popularity of the films, coupled with the hundreds of soft-porn imitations which were allowed to flood the market in their wake, forced Pasolini to rethink the extent to which the sexualized human body could have been said to have escaped being colonized by consumerism, the result of this rethinking being a public "abjuration" of the Trilogy, printed as the introduction to the published screenplays.
But the most thorough abjuration of the Trilogy of Life was undoubtedly Pasolini's next and final film, Salò o le 120 giornate di Sodoma. The film was released (and then, predictably, immediately withdrawn under charges of obscenity) only two weeks after Pasolini's brutal murder at the hands of a young male prostitute, and the gruesome murder of its author inevitably came to colour interpretations of the film itself.
The unmitigated bleakness and nihilism of this vision is clearly a far cry not only from the celebration of the body in the Trilogy but also from the possibility of an outside to dominant power in the borgate films or an elsewhere to neo capitalist consumerism expressed in the adaptation of the Greek plays. Yet this utter desperation and lack of hope represented Pasolini's response to what he saw as a corrupted and degraded Italian reality around him in the mid-1970s. As he was making Salò, in fact, Pasolini was also calling from his column in the Corriere della sera for the arrest and trial of all the major Italian Christian Democrat politians for their part in Italy's degradation. More difficult to ascertain, however, is the question of how far this nihilistic and despairing vision, expressed so uncompromisingly in this final film, may have contributed to Pasolini's own death. Leaving aside whether or not he was killed as part of a conspiracy, did he, perhaps, after months of filming those atrocious scenes, go out that night in November seeking his own death? But perhaps this is to phrase the question wrongly since Death was ever present in Pasolini's cinema: most of the figures in Pasolini's films live against Death and eventually succumb to it. And Death even found a place in Pasolini's film theory (as dee above quote proves).
Apart from the extraordinary achievement of individual films, then, this may be the ultimate fascination that Pasolini and his cinema still retain for us: not only a provocative, heretical, scandalous cinema that proposes both Marxism and a sense of the sacred, both revolution and a return to myth but also and above all a complete coincidence between Cinema and Life, Art and Reality." --- Gino Moliterno (Senses of Cinema)
9:00pm - Pasolini's life'n'times by Carlo Coen ( overview & films )
9:15pm - La Ricotta ( Curd chesse: 1963, 33' ) - segment of "Ro.Go.Pa.G." feature (4 shorts by Godard/PPP/Rossellini/Gregoretti)
Writer/Directer: Pier Paolo Paolini; Producer: Afredo Bini; Original Music: Carlo Rusticchi; Cinematography: Tonino Delli Colli; Film Editing: Nino Bara; Art Director: Dante Ferretti; Costume Design: Danilo Donati.
CAST:Edmonda Aldini (Another Diva); Maria Bernardini (Stripteaser); Laura Betti (The 'Diva'); Mario Cipriani (Stracci); Elesa De Giorgi (Producer's wife); Rossana (Stracci's daughter); Ettore Garafolo (Angel); Vittorio La Paglia (The Journalist); Tomas Millan (Centurione); Franca Pasut (Visitor); Orsen Welles (The 'director').
Special Programme Note: We are only showing episode 3 of 4 (Pasolini's segment). Carlo felt this film contains many of Pasolini's theme's contained in "Trilogy of Life.' So this is a very important primer for you tonight.
About Ro.Go.Pa.G.: "This consists of four short films by different directors. Rosselini's 'Chastity' ('Illibatezza') deals with an attractive air hostess who receives the unwelcome attentions of a middle aged American. Godard's 'New World' ('Il Nuovo Mondo') illustrates a post-apocalypse world the same as the pre-apocalyptic one but for an enigmatic change in attitude in most people, including the central character's girlfriend. In Pasolini's 'Curd Cheese' ('La Ricotta'), a lavish film about the life of Jesus Christ is being made in a poor area. The impoverished people subject themselves to various indignities in the name of moviemaking in order to win a little food. The central character is hoisted up on a cross for filming, and dies there. Finally comes Gregoretti's 'Free Range Chicken' ('Il Pollo Ruspante') in which a family of the materialist culture inadvertently illustrate the cynical, metallic voiced doctrine of a top sales theorist... While shooting "The Passion of Christ" in the periphery of Rome, the arrogant director (Orson Welles), actors, actresses and cast show their lack compassion with the poor and famine Stracci (Mario Cipriani)." (IMDb)
10:00pm - The Decameron ( Il Decameron: 1971, 112', 35mm (1.85), colour, mono, Italy/France/West Germany ) - newly restored print!!!
Writer/Directer/music supervisor: Pier Paolo Paolini; based on the novel, "Decameron" by Giovanni Boccaccio; Producer: Alberto Grimaldi (produced, Gangs of New York); Executive Producer: Franco Rosellini (Nephew of Roberto Rossellini); Original Music: Ennio Morricone; Cinematography: Tonino Delli Colli; Film Editing: Nino Baragli, Tatiana Morigi; Art Director: Dante Ferretti; Costume Design: Danilo Donati; Set Decorator: Andrea Fantacci; Hair Stylist: Iole Cecchini; Makeup Artist: Alessandro Jacoponi; Casting: Alberto De Stefanis; Production Manager: Mario Di Biase; Assistant Direstors: Umberto Angelucci, Sergio Citti, Paolo Andrea Mettel; Sound: Pietro Spadoni; Sound Mixer: Mario Morigi.
CAST:Franco Citti (Ciappelletto); Ninetto Davoli (Andreuccio of Perugia); Vincenzo Amato (Masetto of Lamporecchio); Angela Luce (Peronella); Giuseppe Zigaina (Monk); Gabriella Frankel; Vincenzo Cristo; Pier Paolo Pasolini (Allievo di Giotto); Giorgio Lovine; Salvatore Bilardo; Vincenzo Ferrigno (Giannello); Jovan Jovanovic (Rustico (scenes deleted)).
The book, The Decameron (subtitle: Prencipe
Galeotto) is a collection of 100 novellas by Italian author Giovanni Boccaccio,
probably begun in 1350 and finished in 1353. It is a medieval allegorical work
best known for its bawdy tales of love, appearing in all its possibilities from
the erotic to the tragic. Many notable writers such as Shakespeare and Chaucer
are said to have borrowed from The Decameron. Decameron
is structured in a frame narrative, or frame tale. Boccaccio
begins with a description of the Black Death and leads a group of seven women
and three men who flee from plague-ridden Florence to a villa in the (then)
countryside of Fiesole for two weeks. To pass the time, each member of the party
tells one story for each one of the nights spent at the villa. Although fourteen
days pass, two days each week are set aside: one day for chores and one holy
day during which no work is done. In this manner, 100 stories are told by the
end of ten days.
These frame tale interludes frequently include transcriptions of Italian folk songs. The interactions among tales in a day, or across days, as Boccaccio spins variations and reversals of previous material, forms a whole and not just a collection of stories. The title is a combination of two Greek words meaning "ten" (déka) and "day" (heméra). Boccacio made similar Greek etymological plays of words in his other works. The subtitle is Prencipe Galeotto, which derives from the opening material in which Boccaccio dedicates the work to ladies of the day who did not have the diversions of men (hunting, fishing, riding, falconry) who were forced to conceal their amorous passions and stay idle and concealed in their rooms. Thus, the book is subtitled Prencipe Galeotto, that is Galehaut, the go-between of Lancelot and Guinevere, a nod to Dante's allusion to Galeotto in "Inferno V", who was blamed for the arousal of lust in the episode of Paolo and Francesca. (more info: here -&- here?)
The film consists of eleven sexually supercharged tales selected from Boccaccio's book: the first half of the film is centered around the character of Ciappelletto while the second half of the film has as the central character the painter Giotto. It's a patchwork of many of Pasolini's favourite themes. Pasolini himself plays the role of an aspiring fresco painter who is advised that his completed work will never be as satisfying as his dream of that work.
"The adaptation of Boccaccio's Decameron by Pier Paolo Pasolini has been debated regarding its faithfulness to the original text. His restructuring of Boccaccio's original frame and change in focus of the ten stories chosen and adapted for the film have engendered disapproval among literary and cinema critics, despite their acknowledgment that no work of literature can be perfectly replicated on screen.
Pasolini as Giotto Pasolini's intention was not to recreate the medieval world of Boccaccio's characters but instead to comment on contemporary Italian society through the metaphorical use of the original novellas of the Decameron. Pasolini dismantles the bourgeois frame of the brigata and replaces it with two subframes composed of modified novellas from the Decameron. By effecting this change, at least in his Ciappelletto subframe, Pasolini alters his characters' socio-economic point of view to support the Marxist dialectic which appears in all of his films. For example, Ciappelletto is not the uncultured degenerate of Boccaccio's elite narrator, but instead, from the point of view of the lower class, he appears as a victim of the bourgeois class's manipulation, much like the figure of Pasolini's Accattone who, not coincidentally, is portrayed by Franco Citti in both films. Pasolini's Ciappelletto is "sacrificed" and manipulated by the bourgeoisie, allowing the usurers to continue with their capitalist pursuits and the Church to appropriate his "good" reputation in order further to mislead the poorer classes through their naive and trusting religious devotion.
Pasolini chose particular stories from the Decameron to reverse Boccaccio's original intention and comment on the class conflict. For example, the juxtaposition of Ricciardo and Caterina's story and the novella of Elisabetta and Lorenzo underscores two distinct treatments of "punishment" for sexual transgression based on class considerations: Caterina's father forces the wealthy Ricciardo to marry her, while Lorenzo is killed for violating the honour of Elisabetta's (wealthier) family, for daring to rise above his class. Caterina's father, in a departure from Boccaccio's text, is no longer a knight but a member of a lower class, possibly a merchant, who takes economic advantage of his compromised honour, while Lorenzo is a Sicilian, not a Pisan as in the original, allowing Pasolini to state his position regarding the abuse of and disregard for southern Italy's poor by the northern bourgeois society. To further reinforce the idea of southern Italian poverty, Pasolini endowed his lower class and peasant characters with Neapolitan accents.
Boccaccio relied upon various sources for the Decameron, such as the French fabliaux tradition, contemporary chronicles, medieval romances, Italian folklore, exempla and others, in the same way that Pasolini's filmic text incorporates the original work with Marxist overtones and references to his past cinematic works. Boccaccio's Decameron was "popular" literature in the 14th century, although it may be difficult to imagine women, even in the privacy of their own homes, reading the risqué stories of Alatiel, Peronella, and Compare Pietro and his wife. The popularity of Pasolini's film inspired several equally bawdy spin-offs which, while taking similar advantage of Boccaccio's suggestive stories, completely omit the class-conscious messages intended by Pasolini in his work. Nonetheless, Pasolini's version of the Decameron, despite the controversy it generated, possibly did the most justice to Boccaccio's work simply by increasing the readership of the original text and encouraging rereadings of it." (Ben Lawton)
12:00pm - The Canterbury Tales ( I racconti di Canterbury: 1972, 112', 35mm (1.85), colour, mono, Italy/France ) - Winner of the Golden Bear at the 1972 Berlin Film Festival
Writer/Directer: Pier Paolo Paolini; based on the novel, "The Canterbury Tales" by Geoffrey Chaucer; Producer: Alberto Grimaldi; Original Music: Ennio Morricone; Cinematography: Tonino Delli Colli; Film Editing: Nino Baragli; Production Design: Dante Ferretti; Assistant Designer: Carlo Agati; Costume Design: Danilo Donati; Key Hair Stylist & Wig Maker: Giancarlo De Leonardis; Makeup Artist: Otello Sisi; Special Effects: Luciano Anzellotti; Production Manager: Ennio Onorati, Alessandro von Norman; Assistant Direstors: Umberto Angelucci, Sergio Citti; Sound: Primimiano Muratore; Sound Mixer: Gianni D'Amico.
CAST: Hugh Griffith (Sir January); Laura Betti (The Wife from Bath); Ninetto Davoli (Perkin); Franco Citti (The Devil); Josephine Chaplin (May); Alan Webb (Old Man); Pier Paolo Pasolini (Geoffrey Chaucer); J.P. Van Dyne (The Cook ); Vernon Dobtcheff (The Franklin); Adrian Street (Fighter); O.T. (Chief Witch-Hunter); Derek Deadman (The Pardoner); Nicholas Smith (Friar); George Bethell Datch (Host of the Tabard); Dan Thomas (Nicholas); Michael Balfour (John the carpenter).
This adaptation of Chaucer's renowned collection of stories was the second
film in what Pasolini came to call his "Trilogy of Life," a cinematic
triptych which he had begun a year earlier with Il Decameron
(1970), a sexually-explicit and visually-sumptuous rendition of Boccaccio's
equally famous collection of short stories, and which he would conclude three
years later with Il fiore di mille e una notte (1974), a similarly
mesmerizing adaptation of stories from The Thousand and One Nights.
Given the very difficult and provocative films that Pasolini had been injecting into the highly-charged political atmosphere of the late 1960s in Italy – ideologically-confronting and "indigestible" film-essays like Teorema (Theorem, 1968) and Porcile (Pigsty, 1969) – this trilogy of colourful and highly-palatable films was interpreted by many as signalling Pasolini's abandonment of his self-appointed role as intellectual gadfly and agent provocateur of the Italian bourgeoisie, a renunciation that must have seemed amply confirmed by the ending of The Canterbury Tales where Pasolini himself, in the guise of Geoffrey Chaucer, writes on the screen: "Here end the Canterbury Tales, told for the mere pleasure of their telling," and then adds "Amen". Later on, however, contrary as ever, Pasolini would vigorously maintain that, easy as they were on the eye, the films of the Trilogy were, in a sense, the most "ideological" of his career. For the guiding principle of the Trilogy, he claimed, was the celebration of Life in all its physicality and carnality, an exaltation which the films carried out through a sort of carnival of the primitive, desiring human body as it instinctually contested and joyously transgressed the repressive limits imposed by religious and bourgeois morality. Pasolini thus turned the all-too-predictable charge of having played too much on the sexual elements in the original stories into a defence. As he repeatedly attempted to explain in interviews, the sex and the naked bodies had been precisely the point of the films; and it had been the critics who had missed it! Having struggled so hard to eliminate the sex from the films, he said, many critics had found them empty of content, completely losing sight of the fact that the films' content was right there, on the screen, in that huge prick above their heads which they tried so hard not to understand.
Pasolini was not, of course, the only director to use explicit sex as a tool of ideological provocation during this period; one only needs to remember that Bertolucci's Last Tango in Paris (1972) was also released during this time. But Pasolini's romantic, even, one might say, reactionary belief in the primitive, instinctual body as the touchstone of reality, as the only possible point of resistance in the rising tide of inauthenticity and de-sacralisation unleashed by consumer capitalism mainly through the power of television, soon imploded. For, in fact, whatever provocation or challenge to bourgeois morality Pasolini may have originally intended in the Trilogy's paean to sexuality and the naked body, was soon effectively neutralized by both the films' overwhelming popularity at the box-office and by the dozens of cheap soft-porn imitations spawned by their success. By 1975, profoundly disillusioned by the realization of the impossibility of any effective way of resisting the spread of what he called cultural "massification" – and already at work on Salò o le giornate di Sodoma where the human body far from being "celebrated" is put quite literally on the rack – Pasolini issued a recantation of the Trilogy and of its "ideology." He didn't regret having tried to represent what he believed was the reality of innocent bodies in their most authentic sexual being, he declared, but at this point, given the way in which even explicit depictions of sexuality had become appropriated and integrated into mainstream consumer culture, he had to admit defeat and thus "abjure" his earlier position.
But leaving such ideological considerations aside and coming to The Canterbury Tales itself, one has to admit that, in spite of winning the Golden Bear at Berlin in 1972, the film appeared then, and has remained, something of the poor cousin of the Trilogy, never achieving either the same critical acclaim nor popularity of the other two films. At worst, in fact, it's been judged a lifeless sequel and a "re-mastication," as one Italian critic put it, of the much more successful and striking adaptation of Il Decameron. At best, even if told for the sheer pleasure of storytelling, these stories nevertheless seem condemned to an inability to present the pulse of Life without attracting, everywhere, the silent but insistent presence of Death itself.
Pasolini offered different explanations for what he himself admitted was the least accomplished film of the Trilogy. On a personal level, he said, he had been going through a great deal of unhappiness at the time and some of that sense of suffering and existential anguish had inevitably seeped into the film. At another level, he maintained, it was the world of Chaucer itself which was darker and gloomier than the sunny Italian climes of Il Decameron and the film's muted tones accurately reflected its more pessimistic ethos. Whatever the ultimate validity of these explanations it's nevertheless undeniable that, despite all the surface braggadocio and the sometimes forced sense of fun, in this film Eros is inexorably stalked by Thanatos, so that, despite its middle place in the Trilogy of Life, the film ultimately appears more a meditation on the ubiquity of Death.
In between the full-frontal sex that had also characterized the Decameron there are patches of humour, of course, and the Cook's Tale – no more than a fragment in Chaucer's original – is expanded into a ten minute homage to Chaplin and American silent comedy. The figurative models of Brueghel and Bosch are also invoked to good visual effect and perhaps there's even an allusion to Antonello Da Messina in Pasolini's recreation of Chaucer's study. Nevertheless, for my own part, I must confess that what has always remained with me of this film is the speech of the old man in the Pardonner's Tale to the three young thugs who approach and berate him as they roam around searching for "Traitor Death" who "stole" their friend. "I've wandered even as far as India," he says, "and found no-one who would exchange their youth for my old age. Poor wretch, I go about the world and morning and night beat the earth with my staff and I ask my Mother Earth, 'O Mother, do let me in. When will my bones have their eternal rest? Mother, I'd give all I have for that shroud that envelops you beneath the ground.' But still she will not grant me this grace."
The words are there in Chaucer's original, of course, but the sentiment has always seemed to me to be Pasolini's own presentiment of death. In the end, it seems difficult not to agree with those critics who have suggested that the film has much closer affinities with the Death rattle of Salò than with the other two exuberant and Life-affirming films of the Trilogy. (© Gino Moliterno, 2002)
2:00am - Arabian Nights ( Il fiore delle mille e una notte: 1974, 130', 35mm (1.85), colour, mono, Italy/France ) - rare Toronto showing folks!!!
Writer/Directer: Pier Paolo Paolini; Script Collaboration: Dacia Maraini; Producer: Alberto Grimaldi; Original Music: Ennio Morricone; Cinematography: Giuseppe Ruzzolini; Film Editing: Nino Baragli, Tatiana Casini Morigi; Art Director: Dante Ferretti; Set Decorator: Andrea Fantacci; Costume Design: Danilo Donati; Hair Stylist: Iole Cecchini; Makeup Artist: Massimo Giustini; Production Manager: Mario Di Biase; Assistant Direstors: Umberto Angelucci, Peter Shepherd; Sound: Luciano Welisch; Sound Mixer: Fausto Ancillai.
CAST: Ninetto Davoli (Aziz); Franco Citti (The Demon); Franco Merli (Nur Ed Din); Tessa Bouché (Aziza); Ines Pellegrini (Zumurrud); Margaret Clementi (Aziz's mother); Luigina Rocchi (Aziz's wife); Alberto Argentino (Prince Shahzmah); Francesco Paolo Governale (Prince Tagi); Salvatore Sapienza (Prince Yunan); Zeudi Biasolo (Zeudi); Barbara Grandi; Elisabetta Vito Genovese (Girl in pool #3); Gioacchino Castellini; Abadit Ghidei (Princess Dunya); Jocelyne Munchenbach.
The book, One Thousand and One Nights is a
collection of stories collected over many centuries by various authors, translators
and scholars in various countries. These collections of tales trace their roots
back to ancient Arabia and Yemen, ancient India, ancient Asia Minor, ancient
Persia, ancient Egypt, ancient Mesopotamian Mythology, ancient Syria, and medieval
Arabic folk stories from the Caliphate era. Though the oldest Arabic manuscript
dates from the fourteenth century, scholarship generally dates the collection's
genesis to somewhere between AD 800-900.
What is common throughout all the editions of The Nights is the initial frame story of the ruler Shahryar (from Persian: generally meaning king or sovereign) and his wife Scheherazade (from Persian: generally meaning townswoman) and the framing device incorporated throughout the tales themselves. The stories proceed from this original tale; some are framed within other tales, while others begin and end of their own accord. Some editions contain only a few hundred nights, while others include 1001 or more "nights." The collection, or at least certain stories drawn from it (or purporting to be drawn from it) became widely known in the West during the nineteenth century, after it was translated - first into French and then English and other European languages. At this time it acquired the English name The Arabian Nights' Entertainment or simply Arabian Nights. The best known stories from The Nights include "Aladdin's Wonderful Lamp," "Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves," and "The Seven Voyages of Sinbad the Sailor." Ironically these particular stories, while they are genuine Middle Eastern folk tales, were not part of the "Nights" in its Arabic versions, but were interpolated into the collection by its early European translators.
The main frame story concerns a Persian king and his new bride. The king, Shahryar, upon discovering his former wife's infidelity has her executed and then declares all women to be unfaithful. He begins to marry a succession of virgins only to execute each one the next morning. Eventually the vizier cannot find any more virgins. Scheherazade, the vizier's daughter, offers herself as the next bride and her father reluctantly agrees. On the night of their marriage, Scheherazade tells the king a tale, but does not end it. The king is thus forced to keep her alive in order to hear the conclusion. The next night, as soon as she finishes the tale, she begins (and only begins) another. So it goes for 1,001 nights. (more info)
The film is one of Pasolini’s greatest achievements. Arabian Nights is a shimmering, golden dream of a film, drunk on its own beauty, where story after story unfolds like leaves in an ancient Persian manuscript. Its exquisite, otherworldly tone and intricate, puzzle-box structure, Arabian Nights is simply unforgettable and is delightfully accurate, with Pasolini not limiting his settings to Arabic palaces, deserts, but goes to far-off places like Nepal or Africa, where most of the original tales of the literary source were set.
Arabian Nights is truly a celebration of life for Pasolini. To a certain extent, I can probably declare this as Pasolini's accurate portrayal of his wet dream. The storytelling is vibrant and his visuals are full of bright colors. His characters are young and robust. The boys are laidback and inutile, lazy and oftentimes mainly instructed by hormones instead of intellect. The females are cunning and sly, some are virtuous and some are flirts. When the characters collide, one can easily predict that they will copulate, or at least engage in violent combat. Pasolini does not make room for his usual political discourse, but instead lets the images and the scenery depict his humanity. No wonder Pasolini decided to end his Trilogy of Life with this, a gorgeous and appetizing orgy of man's innate nature to tell stories.
The women in Arabian Nights have been accused of being manipulative to weak men. That's an understandable observation, but I can't really agree with it. The women in the film are knowledgeable about everything supernatural and magical, and the men cheerfully take this as a given. There is also seems to be disproportionate amount of male nudity in the film as opposed to female nudity. It's the guys who lose all their dignity. Hell, Ninetto Davoli, who was in the last two films, appears here again to be castrated by a gang of women! Scenes like that are relatively rare however; many of the stories are about men who need women and women who need men to need them. A feeling of love and equality typically outweighs that of cruelty indicated from the power struggle.
The film isn't exactly strict about fidelity. Nur wanders through a number of sexual encounters in his quest to find his lost lover. While sex is free and encouraged, the moral of the film seems to say that you should pledge your heart to only one. (A side note: Homosexual sex in the film is not regarded in the film as any more right or wrong as heterosexual sex, but there is never an instance where two men or two women actually settle down with one another. Gay sex is just free sex in other words. The moral environment seems similar to Ancient Greece in that regard.) Y'arrr!!! The film’s epigraph reads, “Truth is not found in one dream, but in many,” and the tales in this film seem like the endless collective dream of a culture. If Arabian Nights is the most colourful and aesthetically beautiful film of the trilogy, it is also the freest in its narrative structure and the least confined by its source material. In its beauty of colour and setting, it is rather like Paradjanov’s Sayat Nova or Scorsese’s Kundun, deliriously abstract with baroque imagery and an elusive sense of place and time.
:
'Trilogy of Life' trailer - (all three films cut together back-to-back on one viewer).
Watch YouTube clips: Decameron (The Dream-2'19"-w/Pasolini)--&--Decameron (The Nightengale-8'34") - Canterbury Tales (1'56") -- *
Best website's on PPP: The Pier Paolo Pasolini Study Center (Italy) ...-&-... Pasolini.net.
IMDb DVD details: Decameron - Canterbury Tales - Arabian Nights
Buy DVD's: Decameron - Canterbury Tales - Arabian Nights
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Pier Paolo Pasolini's filmography:
1. Accattone
(The Scrounger: 1961)
2. Mamma Roma (1962)
3. Ro.Go.Pa.G. (1963) (segment
"Ricotta, La")
4. La Rabbia (1963) (part I)
5. Le Mura di Sana (1964)
6. Il Vangelo secondo Matteo (1964)
7. Il Padre selvaggio (1965)
8. Comizi d'amore (1965)
9. Sopralluoghi in Palestina per il vangelo secondo
Matteo (1965)
10. Uccellacci e uccellini (1966)
11. Le Streghe (1967) (segment "Terra
vista dalla luna, La")
12. Edipo re (Oedipus Rex: 1967/I)
13. Capriccio all'italiana (1968) (segment
"Che cosa sono le nuvole?")
14. Appunti per un film sull'india (1968)
15. Teorema (1968)
16. Amore e rabbia (Love and Anger: 1969)
(segment "La sequenza del fiore di carta")
17. Porcile (Pigpen: 1969)
18. Medea (1969)
19. Appunti per un romanzo dell'immondezza
(1970)
20. Appunti per un'Orestiade africana
(1970)
21. Il Decameron (The Decameron: 1971)
22. 12 dicembre (Document on Giuseppe
Pinelli: 1972) (uncredited)
23. I Racconti di Canterbury (The Canterbury
Tales: 1972)
24. Pasolini e... la forma della città
(1974)
25. Il Fiore delle mille e una notte
(Arabian Nights; or, A Thousand and One Nights: 1974)
26. Salò o le 120 giornate di Sodoma
(Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom: 1975)
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See you here @MAJLIS: 163 Walnut Ave.
---MAJLIS is between Richmond & Adelaide; 1-bk W. Niagara [2-Little Lights W. Bathurst]---[[[View Map]]]
Remember, our Shanger & Daughter Cafe is just here for some of your shangin' comfort needs. OK? Shang! Shang! Shangers!!!
We are now CABLE-READY!!! (((...A streaming-sever is next on our agenda...))) Stay tuned folks Y'arrr!!!
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(L-R) Carlo Coen & MC Shanger @Scream in the Park's afterparty (Toronto: Monday, July 9, 2007) - Y'arrr!!! - (Photo: Kathleen Emerald)
About Carlo Coen:
Carlo Coen (b. 1951) has been the Director of the Italian Cultural Institutes in New Delhi, Melbourne and Toronto, and directed the Cinema Section in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Rome for 3 years. He has been in the Italian Foreign Service since 1981, until he decided to call it a day: he quit the job, and settled in Toronto. We do not know yet if this was a welcome acquisition for Torontonians or not. Most probably, no one has noticed any change at all. He has been a film buff all his life, devouring any kind of film, but as an academic he is definitely a self-taught one, as he graduated in Philosophy at the University of Rome. He started programming films in Rome a long, long time ago, in his film club, soon after his graduation. Then, in India, Australia and Canada, he could finally get paid for his activity, much to his relief. He has written a few things on Italian and Indian Cinema and has continued his activity of programmer both in Italy and abroad (the Italian Film Festival and the Art of Love Film Festival in Toronto, quoted only in the hope that somebody heard something about these Festivals). At present he teaches Italian Cinema at the University of Toronto, in the Department of Italian Studies, where he enrolled as a PhD student. After so many years spent around the world, busy with all the chores a foreign service official is supposed to perform, he could finally stop spinning and now he can gather his thoughts. His doctoral thesis (in progress, far from completion) will be on: the Italian Horror cinema of the 1960's and beyond. Of course, Mario Bava will be a pivotal figure in his research.
About Gio Shanger:
Self dubbed, "dee Worlds Only Archival Filmmaker," Gio Shanger was born in Australia in 1959. Son of Italian parents, they soon moved to Italy, and eventually settled in Toronto in 1969. A 1986 film studies degree from Ryerson Polytechnical Institute in Toronto, led to a Sr Motion Picture Technologist position in that department, where he worked until 1996. He left to pursue his full-time experimentations in new ways of approaching documentary filmmaking. As a result, he moved to Reykjavik where he made film history with Ice Rushes: An Icelandic Odyssey, an experimental-documentary about the spirituality and freedom in Iceland. For the first time, the visuals have been shot "1:1", that is everything that he shoots, in the order that he shoots it in, is the final film and then wrote a sound design which was recorded in front of a live audience, all in one take, with no overdubs! He permanently moved to Iceland between 1999-04 as a result of making his film Ice Rushes – the second film of his Rushes trilogy, which he conceived of as an exploration into his "1:1" style, by means of a tribute to his three mentors. The first film is Rail Rushes: A Railroad Odyssey (a tribute to Stan Brakhage) and the last is New York Rushes: A Stanley Kubrick Odyssey (both remain unfinished). Ice Rushes is a tribute to my number one filmmaker and the one that has influenced my work the most, Robert Flaherty. An Angry Black Dog Farts at Midnight is the epilogue to the Rushes Trilogy. It’s a strange stereo-filmmaker approach to making a film - it's co-directed with Jeff Renfroe. The premise is simple: can two filmmakers make a 1:1, with one camera. The answer folks is NO! So we used two cameras. Enough said there folks!!! In hindsight, Black Dog is be a weird tribute to my fourth mentor, Pier Paolo Pasolini.
The Rushes Trilogy is the result of over twenty years of experimentation in his "1:1" style. He has made only eighty S-8 & 16mm films over that time, but has amassed over 700 "films" on video, mostly documenting the live performance arts in Toronto since 1980 until the present-day. Yes folks he have made almost 800 films (please don’t call dee Guinness folks), and still refuses to distribute until he's good'n'ready. As a hermit filmmaker, he almost always works alone. Ice Rushes and ...Black Dog... are only his second and third films that he has allowed to tour on the film festival circuit; where he never applied, but rather, was asked by astute programmers. "One hundred years from now, I will be the last filmmaker on earth. Traveling with my film projector and trusty dog, I would be hand-processing the film that I shot that-day, and narrating my films at night to anyone that wants to remember what film was like – since by then we will all have holodecks."
On Oct 11, 2006 he started ShangOrama.com, which is an extension of all the film exhibition experimentations of The Bio Reykjavik Film Collective, of which he co-founded in 2002, and was it’s head for its first three years. Hence why ShangOrama.com is, "dee worlds only Icelandic cinema outside Iceland." He also authored two books: Kubrick: A Biothon Biography, and dee 36-hr Stanley Kubrick Biothon programme (over 4000 Icelanders showed up for this one, that's 1.5% of dee whole 280,000 Icelandic population folks; "Biothon" means "movie marathon" in Icelandic). For dee last three-years he has been working on a mammoth book on just Frank Zappa dee filmmaker. It's tentatively called, Studio Z: dee Frank Zappa filmmaker-filmography!!! Enjoy this evening folks!!! Y’arrr!!!
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About ShangOrama.com & dee Black Velvet Screen:
We are home to dee bass end of cinema, because we are dee only Icelandic Cinema outside Iceland. All experiments in film exhibition here were perfected by The Bio Reykjavik Film Collective, of which I co-founded in Iceland with Orn Einarsson & Jakob Halldorsson in February 2002. Y'arrr!!! Like Bio Reykjavik we are a travellin' film circus. But Majlis Artspace will always be our spiritual core (thanx Deepti, Ed & Trish!!!).
Come check out our HUGE SCREEN (13'x10' - or - 4m x 3m), with it's crushed velvet matting. It's half dee size of Toronto's BLOOR CINEMA folks. We have 7 perfectly-placed speakers all at ear level (like it should be folks)!!! Dee bass is amazing, it's more like sensor-round. (((Y'arrr'rrr'arrr!!!))) We will always show the just dee directors-cut of any film programmed, AND show in its proper aspect ratio - as each filmmaker should insist on folks (we don't have to be told). As much as possible, we have dee filmmaker in person to introduce their films & field audience Q&A. In absence of that, we believe in learned filmic introductions to further put dee films into its proper context. Be yourself and come out and have fun... Y'arrr!!!
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About The Bíó Reykjavík Film Collective
Bío Reykjavík is, "Indie Film Central for Iceland!!!"
We have done 33-events so far. I know my personal favourite is on Jan 10-12, 2003 when we did dee (the), "36-hr Stanley Kubrick Biothon" (biothon, means Movie Marathon: co-founder, Jakob Halldorsson invented this new Icelandic word just for this event, its now in regular use in Iceland - 9 months later a mainstream cinema did a "LOTR Biothon"). Well folks, over 4000 people came to LOFTKASTALINN Theatre for this event. That's 1.5% of the whole Icelandic population. Can you imagine that. A great time was had by all. Y'arrr!!!
What about our core events: 20 Opid Bio's, which was based on the open screens done during the experimental film scene in New York during 60's, and carried forth by Toronto's "Funnel Experimental Film Theatre" during the 70's & 80's. Because of the Funnel, Toronto became the world mecca for experimental film from 72'ish to 84'ish!!! I started attending the Funnel as a weee lad in 1978 - 1st time to see, Mr Holy Mountain himself, Alejandro Jodorowsky. Met all dee giants of the experimental film scene then: Andy Warhol, Stan Brakhage, Jonas Mekas, dee occultist Kenneth Anger (Shhh'anger), Michael Snow, Bruce Elder, John Porter... oh I could go on & on
Quite frankly, Bio Reykjavik began on a drunkin' bet between Jakob, Orn Einarsson & I on that infamous night at dee end of February 2002. The "bet" was that we three absolutely refused to believe that, "there wasn't an indie film scene in Iceland?" There was no venue for filmmakers to screen their films at. There is no second-run or rep cinema to speak off, let alone a Cinematheque (but, dee National Film Archives does do infrequent events - that's it!). So, we right then and there toyed with dee idea of open screens (again Jakob invented another Icelandic vernacular). We did our first Opid Bio two-weeks later at dee beautiful Vesturport Theatre. It was a smash hit. Filmmakers came out of the woodwork. Some had even stopped making films, because there was no place to screen them, or any financial support for their film - most had given up. But, since all artists need deadlines, and based on their successful screening at our Opid Bio's (filmmaker intro & an audience Q&A session), they started picking up their cameras again and began having their new films ready for our 1st Tuesday of the month event. Y'arrr!!! These Opid Bio's fueled dee indie film scene, and we did more for dee Icelandic underground then anybody has ever done!!! Y'arrr!!!
What about our BEDDA Underground film awards show at dee end of January 2003? You dee audience picked dee winners. At our infamous 'office' over at Kaffibarrin, we always said that, "dee BEDDA's are betta then dee EDDA's" (Icelandic Oscars). Y'arrr!!! As usual, dee bastard child of Bio Reykjavik, Lortur Group, were dee top prize winners. We love havin' our audience do dee thinkin' for us. Thanx folks. Y'arrr!!! Bless, Bless!!! (Icelandic for, ciao ciao!!). Takk kærlega aftur!!!
Come out and really enjoy yourself tonight folks!!! Y'arrr'rrr'arrr!!!
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Then our next event (Yey!):
OM Reunion Project (dee Sumkidz) presents
Full Moon in Y'arr Forest!!!
an In:sight Arts Committee programmed night
Dee next full moon is on Wednesday June 18th, and on this grand night during this years OMee In:sight Summer Solstice Festival week of merriment & reconnecting with ones self, they have a special treat in store for you lovely OMee's out there. To boot, this year solstice falls on OM's infamous Saturday night folks!!! Y'arrr!!! Last years Wednesday night film screenings were an experiment (its a no music night), and an instant hit at dee fest, especially that it followed dee hilarious "Un-talent Night" (still laughing over that one). Like last year, this night is programmed by Dan Browne, Steve 'Rrr & Shanger. Films by Norman McLaren & Kenneth Anger, and (OMee) Peter Mettler's Picture of Light were dee hits of last years Re:treat.
This year, we at dee have planned two great film nights at In:sight. (All film programming is in it's final stages, so please bear with us OMee's!!!) We have a few surprises in store for you. Y'arrr!!! Hint, for dee filmmakers out there who are planning to come to this years In:sight, please bring your films with you. OK? Y'arrr!!!
In:sight Arts Committee
Tues/Thurs, June 17 & 19, 2008 --- sunset - dee witchin' hour ( OM membership required ) @secret mystical Ontario location ( Members know! )
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Coming Soon: Icelandic Film Nights in dee T-dot!!!
Icelandic Grandmaster: Fridrik Thór Fridriksson - (((TWO back-to-back nights, sometime at dee end of June)))
Children of Nature (Börn náttúrunnar: 1991, 82', 35mm (1.66), colour, Dolby stereo, Germany/Iceland/Norway) - only Icelandic film ever to be nominated for an best foreign-film Oscar folks
Angels of the Universe (Englar alheimsins: 2000, 100', 35mm (1.66), colour, Dolby digital, Iceland/Norway/Germany/Sweden/Denmark)
NB - these films will be programmed the night before Matti's night.
Icelandic Grandmaster: Marteinn 'Matti' Thórsson - (In-person!!!)
Programme so far:
Diary of an Assassin (1993, 68', 16mm (1.33), B&W, stereo, Canada/Iceland)
Bogomil Font: The Crooner Behind The Curtain
Toy Soldiers spot
1.0 (2004, 92', 35mm (1.85), colour, stereo, USA/Romania/Iceland) - co-directed & co-written by Jeff Renfroe - (more info).
and, dee WORLD PREMIERE: Rokland Teaser - he's off to Cannes right now to finalize dee financing for his new feature, Rokland (Icelandic for, Stormland). Y'arrrr!!! :)
Added bonus: 1.5 ... dee makin' of 1.0 (by Gio Shanger)
Sylvain & Matti... 
...Matti
(Photos: (L) Sylvain Lavigne; (R) & (above) Matti - all 3 taken in Iceland: Sept 24, 2007)
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SNEAK-PEAK:
Here's some of our up'n'coming ShangOrama.com's summer &
fall programmes here at, "Dee worlds only Icelandic cinema outside of Iceland"
(most dates: TBA)
"Ed's Night Out!!!"
-- Actor/thespian Ed Fielding is Majlis's co-owner. One flic has him starring
alongside porn-star Nina Hartley. It's deliciously titled, Bubbles Galore.
"Rare Spaghetti Western Night"
-- Our ever-popular programmer Carlo Coen (Mario Bava nights) will introduce
& programme this evening. Yes, spaghetti & western sandwiches will be
served. (Hmmmm....)
"Frederick
Wiseman: Master Documenteur"
-- What can we say about 'Mr Direct Cinema' (no narration, no interviews,
just dee filmmaker as voyeur folks.)
"Icelandic Grandmaster: Baltasar Kormákur" - 101 Reykjavik & beyond...
"Icelandic Underground: dee Lortur Group" - dee Bastard-Child of Bio Reykjavik. Y'arrr!!! They're working on a new documentary on Sigur Ros. (Yey!!!) More info: Lortur.org.
"Icelandic Underground:
Best of The Bio Reykjavik Film Collective's "Opid Bio""
-- Gio Shanger is co-founder & Head (2002/04) of this fine group of
Icelandic indie filmmakers. Bio Reykjavik held 20 "Opid Bio's" - Icelandic
for, "Open Cinema" - is a similar concept to that of "Open Screens."
"Audience Randamonium #2:" (Kenneth Shanger, programmer/host)
"Audience Randamonium #3:
Elvis Trilogy" (Silver Elvis, programmer/host)
"Audience Randamonium #4:"
(Your name here?)
"Shang-O-Rama's Second-Anniversary
Randamonium" - (Mon, Oct 13/08)
"2 Banned Hell-O-Ween Films III"
- (Fri, Oct 31/08)
"Remember Our fallen Filmmakers Night III"
- (Tues, Nov 11/08)
Y'arrr folks. Hope you can come out to one of our screenings!!!!
Browse our EVENTS archives:
In:sight- "Full Moon in Y'arr Forrest" (Tues/Thurs, June 17 & 19, 2008) - OM membership required
#14- "Pier Paolo Pasolini's 'Trilogy of Life'" (Sat, May 31, 2008)
#13- "The Anarchy & Alchemy of Alejandro Jodorowsky" (Fri, May 30, 2008) - Back by popular-demand!!
#12 - "CHEAP'n'DIRTY PRODUCTIONS: dee Vancouver Indie Film Scene night!!!" (Fri, May 16, 2008) - In-person: David Ray
#11- "3 Banned Hell-O-Ween Films: The Anarchy & Alchemy of Alejandro Jodorowsky" (Wed, Oct 31, 2007)
#10 - "First-Anniversary Randamonium" (Sat, Oct 13 & Wed, Oct 24, 2007) - Come celebrate our first anniversary!!! Y'arrr!!! (& Held-over by popular demand!)
#9 - "Ontario Provincial Election Night Open House" (Wed, Oct 10, 2007) - We are now cable-ready folks. Yey!!! (((...Streaming server is next on our agenda...)))
jwcurry's - "Messagio Galore: a jwcurry quartet #4" (Sat, Oct 6, 2007)
#8 - "Kubrick's 2001 Trilogy" (Sat, Sept 15, 2007)
#7 - "Death House: dee Class of '93" (Mon, Sept 10, 2007)
#6 - "MC Shanger's 'Rushes Trilogy'" (Sat, Sept 29, 2007)
#5 - "Dario Argento's Goblin Trilogy" (Sat, Aug 25, 2007)
#4 - "a 20-hr Mario Bava mini-me Movie Marathon" (Fri&Sat, Aug 17&18, 2007)
#3 - "Remember Our Fallen Filmmakers Night!!!" (Sat, Nov 11, 2006)
#2 - "2 Banned Hell-o-ween Films" (Tues, Oct 31, 2006)
#1 - "12-hr 'Friday dee 13th' Movie Marathon" (Fri dee 13th of Oct, 2006)
CONTACT & Mailing List additions: shanger@shangorama.com
Shang-O-Rama.com came on-line & was beamed-out from Toronto at precisely: 10:10am (10/11/06)
Can't wait for dee next Halloween - ACO & The Droogs gang rules that night!!! Viddy well Droogies...
Programming, Webmastering & Website ©2008 Gio. Shanger!!! (All rights reserved)
