Pier Paolo Pasolini was an Italian film directorpoet, writer and intellectual who distinguished himself as a controversial personality with a straightforward style. Thanks to his critics, he did not miss of enemies like on could expect it. Corn son death always remains an unsolved mystery, even half a century after his brutality murder.
Italy celebrates 100th anniversary on March 5 of the birth of one of son leading left-wing of intellectuals, while a retrospective of his estimated two dozen movies is planned in Los Angeles.
But the most crucial questions that have gripped Italy since son mutilated body has been found on a beach of Ostia outside Rome on November 2, 1975 – who order son killing and why — remain without answer.
Pasolini was only 53 when he died of a beating with fists and sticks, then run over by an Alfa Romeo GT, his or someone else’s.
A 17-year-an old prostitute, Giuseppe “Pino” Pelosi, was arrested while on the run from the filmmaker car and admitted to killing him, saying that Pasolini tried to rape him.
Pelosi was imprisoned for almost 10 years, but in 2005 he recanted on his confession, instead blame no name three men with Sicilian accents.
The investigation has been reopened in 2010, based on DNA found on Pasolini’s clothes, but only one sample could be identified – Pelosi.
In the years following Pasolini’s death, theories circulated as to why the artist was killed, ranging from blackmail to a hit by the extreme right or the mafia.
Pasolini lived his life without fear of controversy as he took target bourgeois values, Catholic censorship and menace of neo-fascism, while exposing the difficulties of life through an often unbearably dark lens.
He was “an uncomfortable person for those in power”, told Agence France-Presse (AFP) son childhood friend, Silvio Parello, in son Roman workshop that became the filmmaker’s sanctuary.
right to scandalize
Through his essays, poems, plays and films, Pasolini pointed out the disadvantages of italy post-economic war miracle”, which brought modernity but also slums and growing regional inequalities.
“All his life he sought out an archaic, pre-industrial, pre-globalized peasant who he considered innocent,” another friend, Italian writer Dacia Maraini, told AFP.
Pasolini was already known in Italy for his poetry when he started in movie. His last movie”Salo or the 120 days of Sodom”, was released after his death.
Movies range from gritty realism to loose adaptations full of symbolism – “Salo” was based on the work by the Marquis de Sade – while his novels reveal a fascination with small-the hooligans of the suburbs of Rome.
“To scandalize is a right. To scandalize is a pleasure,” he said. in his last television interview, in Paris, on October 31, 1975.
But not everyone liked what he was trying to do.
A little while before son deaththe filmmaker received threats over “Salo”, a review of fascist Italy which caused outrage because of its graphical representation of violence and sexual abuse.
Some believe that Pasolini murder was linked to his investigations of the suspect death of Enrico Mattei, the boss of energy giant Eni, in a plane from 1962 crash probable caused by a bomb.
Politics crime
For criminologist Simona Zecchi, author of two pounds on Pasolini, the writer was killed for son journalism at a time when Italy was in the pangs of violence between far-left and far-right groups, known as the “Années of Lead.”
In 1974, Pasolini- who was close to the Italian Communist Party – published an inflammatory article in Piazza Fontana from December 1969 attack in Milan, who left 17 people dead and more more than 80 injured.
It was first blame on anarchists, then members of a neo-fascist group. Pasolini claimed he knew who has been responsible, but said he had no proof. No one never been convicted.
There are also speculation blackmail played a role in his death like weeks before, the reels of “Salo” had been stolen in Rome. But investigators later ruled out the theory.
Zecchi thinks there was never a will to find out What really happened.
“Italy has problem with the truthcar this truth often walked through the dark side of our institutions,” she said.
Pasolini’s French biographer René de Ceccatty said he resolved the murder East complicated by the “many layers” of individual actors likely to be involved.
“As long as you accept that it was a criminal policy, it’s no surprise there’s so much fog around.”
