Pier Paolo Pasolini
(born March 5, 1922, Bologna, Italy — died Nov. 2, 1975, Ostia, near Rome) Italian film director, poet, and novelist. He wrote novels about Rome's slum life as well as a significant body of poetry. Pasolini became a screenwriter in the mid-1950s, collaborating most notably on
Federico Fellini's
Nights of Cabiria (1956). His directorial debut,
Accattone (1961), was based on his novel
A Violent Life (1959). His best-known film, stylistically unorthodox and implicitly radical, is perhaps
The Gospel According to Saint Matthew (1964). Later films include
Oedipus Rex (1967),
Teorema (1968),
Medea (1969),
The Canterbury Tales (1972), and
The Arabian Nights (1974), which won a special jury prize at Cannes. His use of eroticism, violence, and depravity were criticized by Italian religious authorities.
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