Pasolini decameron giotto biography

Directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1970, 107 minutes.

As a celebrated artist (Pier Paolo Pasolini) arrives in Naples to undertake a commission for the church he is engulfed by a world of stories.

Pasolini decameron giotto biography wikipedia

Tales of ghostly lovers, naughty nuns and inept grave robbers reflect his own meditations on art, life, death and love as he works on a great fresco of the final judgement.

Pasolini’s ‘Decameron’ forms the first part of his ‘Trilogy of Life’, a series of films that continues with adaptations of two other seminal story cycles: ‘The Canterbury Tales’ (1972) and the ‘Arabian Nights’ (1974).

In choosing to adapt these works Pasolini is returning to the foundations of popular culture and consolidating his reputation as a filmmaker of the radical left. Despite the patina of dusty academic respectability that these stories have accrued they are rooted in the story-telling traditions of pre-literate cultures.

For Pasolini they represent ‘the voice of the people’ in its purest form