From 7 December to 2 February 2025
Accepted the Artsupp Card
On the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the presentation of "The Flower of the One Thousand and One Nights" by Pier Paolo Pasolini (1974), the exhibition "The Easts of Pier Paolo Pasolini" based on the photos by Roberto Villa taken in 1973 during the filming of the third film of the "Trilogy of Life" is inaugurated at 5:30 pm on December 6, 2024 in Genoa, at Castello D’Albertis Museum of World Cultures, with the participation of Moni Ovadia, a great admirer and connoisseur of Pasolini.
The exhibition, curated by the Roberto Villa Fund, presents a large number of photographs taken on the set - and off the set - of the film in 1973, documenting Pier Paolo Pasolini's work in the Middle East (Yemen and Iran). Villa's images capture not only many moments of the film's production but also the faces of the local people, as well as the mystical spaces where the poet/director wanted to set his version of that story from the Arab tradition.
For Pasolini, "The Easts" are places of the spirit, desired and dreamed spaces: in the film, a fairy tale of fairy tales, the many events appear as "Russian dolls" and are brought to the screen with a fantastic narrative and dreamlike colors. The Director did not fail to deliver on his promise "It will be my most colorful film, the richest in beautiful colors of my production" and already the chosen locations and the Middle Eastern populations were a testament to this, perfectly supported by the costumes of Danilo Donati on hundreds of extras and by the scenography of the three-time Oscar winner, Dante Ferretti.
Pasolini, as shown in Roberto Villa's photos, appeared very respectful of the local culture he wanted to portray before it disappeared in a progress he distrusted. "The Flower of the One Thousand and One Nights," the last film of the "Trilogy of Life," which includes "The Decameron" (1971) and "The Canterbury Tales" (1972), received the Grand Prix Special Prize at the Cannes Film Festival in 1974, was inspired by the magical atmosphere of Sana’a, where Pasolini had filmed an episode of "The Decameron" that was not included in the film precisely because he believed it could be part of another work. The screenplay was completed in just fifteen days, after Pasolini had reread the book "One Thousand and One Nights." Many parts, especially the dialogues of the women, were the work of the Italian writer Dacia Maraini and revised by Pasolini.
The meeting between Pier Paolo Pasolini and Roberto Villa took place in Milan in 1972. The director himself invited the photographer to accompany him to Iran and Yemen to follow the filming stages of the film in the evocative setting of the cities of Isfahan and Sana’a, among many others as the images show. Roberto Villa stayed on the set for a hundred days and, today, through his shots, we have an extraordinary document that shows us Pasolini and his crew at work on the set of the film that the great director chose as the final chapter of his Trilogy of Life. Not just a simple backstage, but a real and fairy-tale representation at the same time of the people and places that provide the backdrop to Pasolini's work.
Corso Dogali, 18, Genoa, Italy
Opening hours
opens - closes | last entry | |
monday | Closed now | |
tuesday | 10:00 - 17:00 | |
wednesday | 10:00 - 17:00 | |
thursday | 10:00 - 17:00 | |
friday | 10:00 - 17:00 | |
saturday | 10:00 - 18:00 | |
sunday | 10:00 - 18:00 |
Always
Roots
4.50 € instead of 6.00€