dinsdag19juli

i did the first test projection at my new place and it all works fine. Soon some projectionevenings will be organised.We saw the great, funny and surreal Uccellacci e uccellini directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini.

The movie is a post-neorealist story about Totò, the beloved stone-faced clown of Italian folk-stories. Totò and his son Ninetto, roam the neighbourhood and the countryside of Rome. During their walk they meet a talking crow, who, as seen on the intertitles, "Per chi avesse dei dubbi o si fosse distratto, ricordiamo che il Corvo è un intellettuale di sinistra -diciamo così- di prima della morte di Palmiro Togliatti" ("For the benefit of those who were not paying attention or are in doubt, we remind that the Crow is a -to so call it- left-wing intellectual of the kind of those living before Palmiro Togliatti's death").

The Crow tells them the tale of Ciccillo and Ninetto (still played by Totò and Ninetto), two franciscan friars, who were bid by San Francesco to preach to the hawks and the sparrows. They were successful in preaching the commandment of love unto them separately, but were not able to get them to love each other.

After the tale, the journey of Totò and Ninetto carries on, the Crow still following them and continuously speaking in an all-too-intellectually sounding way. They meet many other people in a deeply visionary setting, among which: land-owners who order them out of their land and end up shooting at Totò and Ninetto who wouldn't obey; a family living in a slum that Totò threathens to drive them out of their house; a group of travelling actors boarding a Cadillac; "1° convegno dei dentisti dantisti" (a wordplay, literally "1st convention of the Danteist dentists", with "Danteist" meaning "Dante scholar"); an engineer who is waiting for Totò to give him the money he owes him. After that, a brief extract of footage of Palmiro Togliatti's funeral. Then, after having met a prostitute, they end up killing and eating the Crow, whom they found to be unconscionably boring.