Luca Peretti is a visiting assistant professor at Ohio State University. He works on Italian media, film history, and Italian cultural history. He is co-editor of Pier Paolo Pasolini, Framed and Unframed: A Thinker for the Twenty-First Century.
Venice’s International Film Festival is awarding Roberto Benigni this year’s Golden Lion for lifetime achievement. Announcing the award, the festival called Benigni a model of transgressive filmmaking. In fact, for decades, the Life Is Beautiful star has symbolized how onetime radicals turn into purveyors of conformist schmaltz.
Italy’s illustrious Marxist filmmaker Bernardo Bertolucci died last week. His films explored the death of the bourgeoisie; his legacy points us to the death of the chauvinist male auteur.
A look at the life and politics of Pier Paolo Pasolini, heterodox communist.