Ascanio Celestini: «Here is my Pasolini Museum»

«I am a Pasolinian of the first hour – explains the Roman actor and author – but like many of my age or younger, I only got to know his work after his tragic disappearance on the beach of Ostia. A violent death that also changed the perception of the character, perhaps making him even more famous but relegating his true contents to the background. Therefore my “cunto” will be strictly chronological in a comparison between what he was doing and what was happening at the same time in Italy».

Starting from two absolute certainties that run through all of his work. «We are absolutely sure of two things – continues Celestini – of the fact that he was a communist, something he always maintained from 1947 to 1975 (and I believe he would remain so in the years following his death as well) and of his affirmation that the intellectual is always a bourgeois figure, who was only allowed the possibility of betraying his class to take the side of the proletariat. A bit like he said in no uncertain terms to the students of Valle Giulia in ’68 ».

Paladin of otherness Pasolini lived a very intense relationship with Naples, which he defined as “a historical pocket in which the Neapolitans decided to remain what they were and, thus, to let themselves die”. A sort of enclave resistant to the homologation of modernity. «Pasolini was referring to the city’s way of being but also to his ever-living language. On the other hand, he didn’t like to be nice, on the contrary he always wanted to underline his diversity with respect to the flattening of conformity. And in this I believe that Naples could represent a right collective reference to his ideas. An attention to the city that also emerged in films such as the “Decameron” or “Uccellacci ebirdini” in which he helped Totò rediscover his own immense dramatic vein».

© REPRODUCTION RESERVED