directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini
Pier Paolo Pasolini: 40th Anniversary
Narrated in the style of a cinematic notebook, Pasolini’s interest in
adapting the ancient tragedy for the screen using African actors is mixed with
a stubbornly colonial look at realities in Tanzania, Uganda and Ethiopia. The
documentary is a preparatory documentary to the “film to be made”,
and it could be described as a real notebook of moving images. It is divided
into three different types of film material. The first is a travel documentary,
shot during two stays in Uganda and Tanzania (respectively in December 1968 and
in February 1969) integrated with several newsreels of the war in Biafra
(1967/69); the goal was to track down the places, faces, objects to the film
adaptation of the Oresteia by Aeschylus. The second is a debate / confrontation
between Pasolini and some African students at the University “La
Sapienza” of Rome on the idea of the Aeschylus tragedy setting, and the
implications of post-colonial African affairs. The third is a sort of variation
on the theme and consists of a jazz session performed by Yvonne Murray and
Archie Savage at FolkStudio in Rome.