Era una caldissima giornata d’estate – memories of Pasolini’s Rome
Rome is the city of memories – there is hardly any place in Europe living more of its past (and in its past) than the Italian capital. The city’s memories are enshrined in an extraordinary mix of millennial architecture, in the psyche of its inhabitants who would not hesitate to highlight traditions dating back to ancient times when disputing with foreigners, and in a rich mix of literary, visual and plastic arts.
For a city with such an overwhelming ancient, medieval and Renaissance heritage, Rome’s contribution to the cultural history of the twentieth century is surprisingly distinguished. In particular, Rome enriched post-war cinema with the neorealist works of Rossellini, Fellini, De Sica, Visconti, as well as those of Pier Paolo Pasolini (1922-1975).
Pasolini had a particular interest in the peripheral spaces of the city and its society. While the development of Rome has for thousands of years only known one direction - towards the centre, where the consular roads and aqueducts converge - the most dramatic changes during the last century occurred in the periphery, in the city’s borgate, which were often not much different from the slums of today's cities in the developing world. Pasolini’s fascination for the “antibourgeois” spaces at the margins of the metropolis are reflected in cinematographic masterpieces such as "Accattone" (1961), "Mamma Roma" (1962) “La Ricotta” (1963) and “Uccellacci e uccellini” (1965).
The photography and book project "Era una caldissima giornata d’estate…" (“It was a hot summer day”) is the result of a plurennial research into what is left in today’s Rome of the places made famous by the early Pasolini. The series offers a timeless journey through the neighbourhoods along Via Tuscolana, the Parco degli Acquedotti, Testaccio, EUR, the Ghetto and the Castelli Romani – all places where Pasolini had lived, worked, and which he had eventually made immortal with his films, inscribing them in the collective memory of the city of memories.