Pier Paolo Pasolini in persona

Pasolini stated that he only gives interviews reluctantly. Nevertheless, since the mid-1950s, he has granted a considerable number: in major daily and weekly newspapers, in magazines like Vogue, in conversation collections, and increasingly on television.

He shares with Dacia Maraini about his childhood, discusses old and new fascism, his difficulties with the 68ers, anti-democratic mass media, sex as a metaphor, and his loving madness for Italy – up until the last interview just hours before his death.

The interviews not only testify to the remarkable media presence of a public intellectual who sometimes even questions himself. They accompany and complement the diverse work of the artistically and journalistically talented Pasolini. In the conversations, he tests theses, defends himself against criticism of his novels and films, and embodies both the leftist heretic and the fiercely attacked, at times even excessive polemicist.

Above all, this selection of conversations – along with little-known autobiographical texts – paints a multifaceted picture of the man Pasolini, whose desire for closeness and dialogue remains desperately alive.