2 days ago
Pier Paolo Pasolini's mysterious death continues to haunt Italy, 50 years on
In the office of Stefano Maccioni, in the south of Rome, Pier Paolo Pasolini is everywhere. The library of the 59-year-old lawyer is stacked with books by the famous Italian writer, poet and filmmaker. On the wall hangs a photograph of the devout Catholic, openly gay and Communist activist, who stood against both consumer society and the right to abortion.
On Maccioni's desk, thick binders are filled with press clippings about this unclassifiable figure of 20 th century Italian left-wing politics who, alongside his literary work, never stopped condemning the corruption of political elites, the persistence of fascism and the power of the Mafia in relentless editorials published in the daily newspaper Corriere della Sera, from 1973 until his violent and mysterious death two years later.
On the night between November 1 and 2, 1975, the director of Accattone (1961) and Teorema (1968) was found dead, beaten and run over by a car on a grim wasteland in Ostia, a coastal suburb of Rome. He was 53 years old. At the crime scene, the police set up no security perimeter and allowed local onlookers from the working-class neighborhood to crowd around the artist's body, hastily covered with a sheet.
