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Sana'a صنعاء Ṣanʿāʾ
Sana'a
Sana'a Location in Yemen
Coordinates: 15°20′54″N 44°12′23″E / 15.34833°N 44.20639°E / 15.34833; 44.20639Coordinates: 15°20′54″N 44°12′23″E / 15.34833°N 44.20639°E / 15.34833; 44.20639
Country	Yemen
Administrative division	Amanat Al Asimah
Government
• Type	Local
• Mayor: Abdulrahman al-Akwaa	Numan Dowaid
Elevation	7,380 ft (2,250 m)
Population (2004)
• City	1,747,627
• Metro	2,167,961
Time zone	GMT+3

Sana'a (Arabic: صنعاء‎ Ṣanʿāʾ pronounced [sˤɑnʕaːʔ], Yemeni Arabic: [ˈsˤɑnʕɑ]), also spelled "Sana", is the capital of Yemen and the centre of San‘a’ Governorate; however the city itself is not part of the Governorate, but forms the separate administrative district of "Amanat Al-Asemah".

Sana'a is one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world. At an altitude of 2,300 metres (7,500 ft), it is also one of the highest capital cities in the world. Sana'a has a population of approximately 1,748,000 (2010) making it Yemen's largest city. The old city of Sana'a, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, has a distinctive visual character due its unique architectural characteristics, most notably expressed in its multi-story buildings decorated with geometric patterns.^[1][2]

History[link]

Astronaut View of Sana'a

Ancient period[link]

Sana'a is one of the oldest populated places in the world. According to popular legend it was founded by Shem, the son of Noah.^[3][4] It was known as "Azal" in ancient times, referring to Uzal, a son of Qahtan who was a great-grandson of Shem. Its current name likely derived from the South Arabian word for "well-fortified". Arab historian al-Hamdani wrote that Sana'a was walled by the Sabeans under their ruler Sha'r Awtar who also built the Ghumdan Palace in the city. Because of its location, Sana'a has served as an urban center for the surrounding tribes of the region and as a nucleus of regional trade in southern Arabia. It was positioned at the crossroad of two major ancient trade routes linking Marib in the east to the Red Sea in the west.^[4]

When King Yousef Athar (or Dhu Nuwas), the last of the Himyarite kings, was in power, Sana'a was also the capital of the Ethiopian viceroys.

Islamic era[link]

As of the dawn of Islam until the detachment of independent sub-states in many parts of Yemen Islamic Caliphate, Sana'a persisted as the governing seat, who himself is Caliph's deputy in running the affairs of one of Yemen's Three Makhalifs: Mikhlaf Sana'a, Mikhlaf al-Janad and Mikhlaf Hadhramawt. The city of Sana'a recurrently assumed an important status and all Yemenite States competed to control it.

The 8th-century Islamic jurist and founder of the Shafi'i school or jurisprudence, Imam al-Shafi'i visited Sana'a several times and praised the city, writing La budda min Ṣanʻāʼ or "Sana'a must be seen." In the 9th–10th century, the Yemeni geographer al-Hamdani took note of the city's cleanliness, saying "The least dwelling there has a well or two, a garden and long cesspits separate from each other, empty of ordure, without smell or evil odors, because of the hard concrete (adobe and Cob probably) and fine pastureland and clean places to walk." Later in the 10th-century, Persian geographer Ibn Rustah wrote of Sana'a "It is the city of Yemen—there not being found ... a city greater, more populous or more prosperous, of nobler origin or more delicious food than it."

In 1062 Sana'a was taken over by the Sulayhid dynasty led by Ali al-Sulayhi and his wife, the popular Queen Asma, who made the city capital of his relatively small kingdom which also included the Haraz Mountains. The Sulayhids were aligned with the Ismaili Muslim leaning Fatimid Caliphate of Egypt, rather than the Baghdad-based Abbasid Caliphate which most of Arabia followed. Al-Sulayhi ruled for about 20 years but his reign was ended following his assassination by his principal local rivals, the Zabid-based Najahids. Following his death, al-Sulayhi's daughter, Arwa al-Sulayhi, inherited the throne, but promptly withdrew from Sana'a transferring the Sulayhid capital to Jibla where she ruled much of Yemen from 1067 to 1138. As a result of the Sulayhid departure, the Hamdanid dynasty took control of Sana'a.^[5]

In 1173 Saladin, the Ayyubid sultan of Egypt, sent his brother Turan-Shah on an expedition to conquer Yemen. The Ayyubids were able to gain control of Sana'a in 1175 and united the various Yemeni tribal states except for the northern mountains controlled by the Zaydi imams into one entity.^[5] The Ayyubids switched the country's official religious allegiance to the Sunni Muslim Abbasids. During the reign of Ayyubid emir Tughtekin ibn Ayyub, the city underwent significant improvements and the incorporation of the garden lands on the western bank of the Sa'ilah, known as Bustan al-Sultan, where the Ayyubids built one of their palaces.^[6] Despite Sana'a's strategic position, the Ayyubids chose Ta'izz as their capital while Aden was their principal income-producing city.

While the Rasulids controlled most of Yemen, followed by their successors the Tahirids, Sana'a largely remained in the political orbit of the Zaydi imams from 1323 to 1454 and outside of the former two dynasties rule.^[7] The Mamelukes arrived in Yemen in 1517.

Ottoman era[link]

The Ottoman Empire entered Yemen in 1538 when Suleiman the Magnificent was Sultan.^[8] Under the military leadership of Özdemir Pasha, the Ottomans conquered Sana'a in 1547.^[7] With Ottoman approval, European captains based in the Yemeni port towns of Aden and Mocha frequented Sana'a to maintain special privileges and capitulations for their trade. In 1602 local Zaydi imams led by Imam al-Mu'ayyad reasserted their control over the area,^[8] and forced out Ottoman troops in 1629. Although the Ottomans fled during al-Mu'ayyad's reign, it was his predecessor al-Mansur al-Qasim who had vastly weakened the Ottoman army in Sana'a and Yemen.^[7] Consequently, European traders were stripped of their previous privileges.^[8]

The Zaydi imams maintained their rule over Sana'a until the Ottomans relaunched their campaign to control the region in the mid 19th-century. In 1835, Ottoman troops arrived on the Yemeni coast under the guise of Muhammad Ali of Egypt's troops,^[8] but were unable to capture Sana'a until 1872 when their troops led by Ahmed Muhtar Pasha entered the city.^[7] The Ottoman Empire instituted the Tanzimat reforms throughout the lands they governed. In Sana'a, city planning was initiated for the first time, new roads were built and schools and hospitals were established. The reforms were rushed by the Ottomans in order to soldify their control of Sana'a to compete with an expanding Egypt, British influence in Aden and imperial Italian and French influence along the coast of Somalia, particularly in the towns of Djibouti and Berbera. The modernization reforms in Sana'a were still very limited, however.^[9]

North Yemen period[link]

The residence of Imam Yahya in the Wādī Ẓahr (وادى ظهر) near Sana'a

In 1904, as Ottoman influence was waning in Yemen, Imam Yahya of the Zaydi imams took power in Sana'a. In a bid to secure North Yemen's independence, Yahya embarked on a policy of isolationism, avoiding international and Arab world politics, cracking down on embryonic liberal movements, not contributing to the development of infrastructure in Sana'a and elsewhere and closing down the Ottoman girls' school. As a consequence of Yahya's measures, Sana'a increasingly became a center of anti-government organization and intellectual revolt.^[10]

In the 1930s, several organizations opposing or demanding reform of the Zaydi imamate sprung up in the city, particularly Fatat al-Fulayhi, a group of various Yemeni Muslim scholars based in Sana'a's Fulayhi Madrasa, and Hait al-Nidal ("Committee of the Struggle.") By 1936 the leaders of these movements mostly imprisoned. In 1941 another group based in the city, the Shabab al-Amr bil-Maruf wal-Nahian al-Munkar, called for a nahda ("renaissance") in the country as well as the establishment of a parliament with Islam being the instrument of Yemeni revival. Yahya largely repressed the Shabab and most of its leaders were executed following his son, Imam Ahmad's inheritance of power in 1948.^[10] That year, Sana'a was replaced with Ta'izz as capital following Ahmad's new residence there. Most government offices followed suit. A few years later, most of the city's Jewish population emigrated to Israel.^[11]

Ahmad began a process of gradual economic and political liberalization, but by 1961 Sana'a was witnessing major demonstrations and riots demanding quicker reform and change. Pro-republican officers in the North Yemeni military sympathetic of Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt's government and pan-Arabist policies staged a coup overthrowing the Imamate government in September 1962, a week after Ahmad's death.^[10] Sana'a's role as capital was restored afterward.^[11] Neighboring Saudi Arabia opposed this development and actively supported North Yemen's rural tribes, pitting large parts of the country against the urban and largely pro-republican inhabitants of Sana'a.^[10] The North Yemen Civil War resulted in the destruction of some parts of the city's ancient heritage and continued until 1968 when a deal between the republicans and the royalists was reached,^[11] establishing a presidential system. Instability in Sana'a continued due to continuing coups and political assassinations until the situation in the country stabilized in the late 1970s.^[10]

British writer Jonathan Raban visited in the 1970s and described the city as fortress-like, its architecture and layout resembling a labyrinth," further noting "It was like stepping out into the middle of a vast pop-up picturebook. Away from the street, the whole city turned into a maze of another kind, a dense, jumbled alphabet of signs and symbols."

Contemporary era[link]

Following the unification of Yemen, Sana'a was designated capital of the new Republic of Yemen. It houses the presidential palace, the parliament, the supreme court and the country's government ministries. The largest source of employment is provided by the governmental civil service. Due to massive rural immigration, Sana'a has grown far outside its Old City, but this has placed a huge strain on the city's underdeveloped infrastructure and municipal services, particularly water.^[10]

Sana'a was chosen as the 2004 Arab Cultural Capital by the Arab League. In 2008, the Saleh Mosque was completed. It holds over 40,000 worshipers.

On 21 May 2012, Sana'a was attacked by a suicide bomber, resulting in the deaths of 120 people.

Geography and climate[link]

Districts[link]

Generally, Sana'a is divided into two parts: the Old City District ("al-Qadeemah") and the new city ("al-Jadid.") The former is much smaller and retains the city's ancient heritage and mercantile way-of-living while the latter is an urban sprawl with many suburbs and modern buildings. The newer parts of the city were largely developed in the 1960s and onward when Sana'a was chosen as the republican capital.^[11]

The following are the list of districts in the city:

Climate[link]

Sana'a features the very rare mild version of a desert climate. Sana'a sees on average approximately 200 mm of precipitation per year. However, due to its high elevation, temperatures are much more moderate than many other cities on the Arabian Peninsula. In fact, average temperatures remain relatively constant throughout the year in Sana'a, with its coldest month being January and its warmest month in July. The city seldom experiences extreme heat or cold. However, some areas around the city can see temperatures fall to around 15 or 20 ºF (−8ºC) during winter. Frost usually occurs in the early winter mornings, and there is a slight wind chill in the city at elevated ares that causes the cold mornings to be oddly bitter, including low humidity. The Sun warms the city to the high 60s and low 70s during the noontime but it drops drastically as night falls in. The city experiences many microclimates from district to district because of its location in the Sana'a basin and uneven elevations throughout the city. Summers are warm and can cool rapidly at night, especially after rainfall. Sana'a receives half of its annual rainfall during the months of July and August. Rainfall comes depending on the year; some years could see 500–600 mm of rainfall, while others can barely get 150 mm. High temperatures have increased slightly during the summer over the past few years, however, low temperatures and winter temperatures have dramatically fallen over the same period.

Culture[link]

Old City of Sana'a *
UNESCO World Heritage Site
Country	Yemen
Type	Historic, Cultural
Criteria	IV, V, VI
Reference	385
Region **	Arab States
Inscription history
Inscription	1986 (10th Session)
* Name as inscribed on World Heritage List ** Region as classified by UNESCO

Old City[link]

The old city of Sana'a

The old fortified city has been inhabited for more than 2,500 years and contains many intact architectural gems. It was declared a World Heritage Site by the United Nations in 1986. Efforts are underway to preserve some of the oldest buildings some of which, such as the Samsarh and the Great Mosque of Sana'a, are more than 1,400 years old. Surrounded by ancient clay walls which stand 9–14 metres (30–46 ft) high, the old city contains more than 100 mosques, 12 hammams (baths) and 6,500 houses. Many of the houses resemble ancient skyscrapers, reaching several stories high and topped with flat roofs. They are decorated with elaborate friezes and intricately carved frames and stained-glass windows.

One of the most popular attractions is Suq al-Milh (Salt Market), where it is possible to buy salt along with bread, spices, raisins, cotton, copper, pottery, silverware, and antiques. The 7th-century Jami' al-Kabir (Great Mosque) is one of the oldest mosques in the world. The Bāb al-Yaman (Yemen Gate) is an iconized entry point through the city walls and is more than 1,000 years old. Nearby is Tahreer Square, also known as Freedom Square or Change Square, which has been the site of protests, and where Nobel Peace Prize winner Tawakel Karman has been camped in a tent throughout the Arab Spring movement.

A commercial area of the old city is known as Al Madina where development is proceeding rapidly. In addition to three large hotels, there are numerous stores and restaurants. The area also contains three parks and the President's palace.

Sports[link]

Football (soccer) is the most popular sport in Sana'a. The city is home to the Ali Muhesen Stadium, home of the Yemen national football team, and is mostly used for football matches. The stadium holds 25,000 people.

Demographics[link]

This section needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (October 2009)

Population growth spiked starting in the 1960s as a result of mass rural migration to the city in search of employment and improved standard of living.^[11] Sana'a is the fastest growing capital city in the world with a growth rate of 7%,^[16] while the growth rate of the nation as a whole is 3.2%.^[17] About 10% of the population resides in the Old City, while the remainder live in the outside districts.^[11]

Jewish community[link]

Jews have been present in Yemen since the 10th-century BCE and form one of the most historic Jewish diasporas. After the creation of the state of Israel about 49,000 (of an estimated 51,000) of Yemeni Jews were airlifted to Israel, almost 10,000 of whom were from Sana'a (see the English-language book Jews and Muslims in lower Yemen: a study in protection and restraint, 1918–1949). There was essentially no Jewish population in Sana'a until the Sa'dah insurgency broke out in Saada Governorate in 2004. The Houthi rebels directly threatened the Jewish community in 2007, prompting the government of President Saleh to offer them refuge in Sana'a. As of 2010, there were around 70 Jews living in the capital under government protection.^[18]

Economy[link]

As the capital city of Yemen, 40% of jobs in Sana'a are in the public sector. Other primary sources of formal employment in the city are trade and industry. Like many other cities in the developing world, Sana'a has a large informal sector which is estimated to constitute 32% of nongovernmental employment. However, while there is a greater variety of jobs in Sana'a as compared to other cities in Yemen, there is also greater poverty and unemployment. It is estimated that 25% of the labor force in Sana'a is unemployed.^[19]

Transport[link]

Yemenia, the national airline of Yemen, has its head office in Sana'a.^[20] Sana'a International Airport is Yemen's main domestic and international airport. There is currently no rail network but there are plans to install one in the future. A primary means of transport in the city is via dababs, minibuses which carry about 10 people. Taxis are also a very common form of public transport and there are coaches to major cities such as Aden and Taiz.

The 1,000-year old Bab Al-Yemen (the Gate of Yemen) at the centre of the old town.

Sana'a

See also[link]

• Mahwa Aser
• Al Khair Mosque
• Sana'a manuscript – fragments from over 1,000 early Qur'an codices, discovered at the Great Mosque in Sana'a in 1972.
• Saleh Mosque
• 2011 Yemeni protests

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Sana'a

• "The Old Walled City of San`a", 113 page book by Ronald Lewcock for Unesco
• "Sana'a – City of lights. The German-French Cultural Project 2007. Weblog"
• Eric Hansen, Sana'a rising, Saudi Aramco World, 2006. Vol. 57 No. 1
• Tim Mackintosh-Smith, The Secret Gardens of Sana'a. Saudi Aramco World, 2006 Vol. 57 No. 1
• Traditional housing in the old quarter of Sanaa in 1972

v t e Governorates of Yemen 'Adan Abyan Al Mahrah Hadramaut Lahij Shabwah Ad Dali' 'Amran Al Bayda' Al Hudaydah Al Jawf Al Mahwit Amanat Al Asimah Dhamar Hajjah Ibb Ma'rib Raymah Saada Sana'a Ta'izz

v t e Sana'a Governorate Capital: Sana'a Districts Al Haymah Ad Dakhiliyah District Al Haymah Al Kharijiyah District Al Husn District Arhab District Attyal District Bani Dhabyan District Bani Hushaysh District Bani Matar District Bilad Ar Rus District Hamdan District Jihanah District Khwlan District Manakhah District Nihm District Sa'fan District Sanhan District

Pier Paolo Pasolini
200px
Born	(1922-03-05)March 5, 1922 Bologna, Italy
Died	November 2, 1975(1975-11-02) (aged 53) Ostia, Rome, Italy
Occupation	Film director, novelist, poet, intellectual, journalist, linguist, philosopher
Notable work(s)	Accattone Salò The Gospel According to St. Matthew
Influences Dante Alighieri, Giovanni Boccaccio, Geoffrey Chaucer, William Shakespeare, Novalis, Marquis de Sade, Charles Baudelaire, Arthur Rimbaud, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Carlo Emilio Gadda, Giovanni Pascoli, Antonio Gramsci
Influenced Sylvia Plath, Alberto Moravia, Sergei Parajanov, Ermanno Olmi, Nanni Moretti, Kathy Acker, Diamanda Galás, Michael Haneke, Catherine Breillat
Signature

Pier Paolo Pasolini (March 5, 1922 – November 2, 1975) was an Italian film director, poet, writer and intellectual. Pasolini distinguished himself as a poet, journalist, philosopher, linguist, novelist, playwright, filmmaker, newspaper and magazine columnist, actor, painter and political figure. He demonstrated a unique and extraordinary cultural versatility, becoming a highly controversial figure in the process.

Biography[link]

Early life[link]

Pasolini was born in Bologna, traditionally one of the most leftist of Italian cities. He was the son of a lieutenant of the Italian Army, Carlo Alberto, who had become famous for saving Benito Mussolini's life during Anteo Zamboni's assassination attempt, and subsequently married an elementary school teacher, Susanna Colussi, in 1921. Pasolini was born in 1922 and was named after his paternal uncle. His family moved to Conegliano in 1923 and, two years later, to Belluno, where another son, Guidalberto, was born. In 1926, Pasolini's father was arrested for gambling debts, and his mother took the children to her family's house in Casarsa della Delizia, in the Friuli region.

Pasolini began writing poems at the age of seven, inspired by the natural beauty of Casarsa. One of his early influences was the work of Arthur Rimbaud. In 1933 his father was transferred to Cremona, and later to Scandiano and Reggio Emilia. Pasolini found it difficult to adapt to all these moves, though in the meantime he enlarged his poetry and literature readings (Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Shakespeare, Coleridge, Novalis) and left behind the religious fervour of his early years. In the Reggio Emilia high school, he met his first true friend, Luciano Serra. The two met again in Bologna, where Pasolini spent seven years while completing high school: here he cultivated new passions, including football. With other friends, including Ermes Parini, Franco Farolfi, Elio Meli, he formed a group dedicated to literary discussions.

In 1939 Pasolini graduated and entered the Literature College of the University of Bologna, discovering new themes such as philology and aesthetics of figurative arts. He also frequented the local cinema club. Pasolini always showed his friends a virile and strong exterior, totally hiding his interior travail. He took part in the Fascist government's culture and sports competitions. In 1941, together with Francesco Leonetti, Roberto Roversi and others, he attempted to publish a poetry magazine, but the attempt failed due to paper shortages. In his poems of this period, Pasolini started to include fragments in Friulan, which he had learned from his mother.

Early poetry[link]

After the summer in Casarsa, in 1941 Pasolini published at his own expense a collection of poems in Friulan, Versi a Casarsa. The work was noted and appreciated by intellectuals and critics such as Gianfranco Contini, Alfonso Gatto and Antonio Russi. His pictures had also been well received. Pasolini was chief editor of the Il Setaccio ("The Sieve") magazine, but was fired after conflicts with the director, who was aligned with the Fascist regime. A trip to Germany helped him also to discover the "provincial" status of Italian culture in that era. These experiences led Pasolini to rethink his opinion about the cultural politics of Fascism and to switch gradually to a Communist position.

In 1942, the family took shelter in Casarsa, considered a more tranquil place to wait for the conclusion of the war, a decision common among Italian military families. Here, for the first time, Pasolini had to face the erotic disquiet he had suppressed during his adolescent years. He wrote: "A continuous perturbation without images or words beats at my temples and obscures me".^{[citation needed]}

In the weeks before the 8 September armistice, Pasolini was drafted. He was captured and imprisoned by the Germans. He managed to escape disguised as a peasant, and found his way to Casarsa. Here he joined a group of other young fans of the Friulan language who wanted to give Casarsa Friulan a status equal to that of Udine, the official regional standard. From May 1944 they issued a magazine entitled Stroligùt di cà da l'aga. In the meantime, Casarsa suffered Allied bombardments and forced enrollments by the Italian Social Republic, as well as partisan activity.

Pasolini tried to remain apart from these events. He and his mother taught students unable to reach the schools in Pordenone or Udine. He experienced his first homosexual love for one of his students. At the same time, a Slovenian schoolgirl, Pina Kalč, was falling in love with Pasolini. On 12 February 1945 his brother Guido was killed in an ambush. Six days later Pasolini and others founded the Friulan Language Academy (Academiuta di lenga furlana). In the same year Pasolini joined the Association for the Autonomy of Friuli. He graduated after completing a final thesis about Giovanni Pascoli's works.

In 1946 Pasolini published a small poetry collection, I Diarii ("The Diaries"), with the Academiuta. In October he travelled to Rome. The following May he began the so-called Quaderni Rossi, handwritten in old school exercise books with red covers. He completed a drama in Italian, Il Cappellano. His poetry collection, I Pianti ("The cries"), was also published by the Academiuta.

Relationship with the Italian Communist Party[link]

On 26 January 1947 Pasolini wrote a controversial declaration for the front page of the newspaper Libertà: "In our opinion, we think that currently only Communism is able to provide a new culture." The controversy was partly due to the fact he was still not a member of the Italian Communist Party (PCI).

He was also planning to extend the work of the Academiuta to other Romance language literatures and knew the exiled Catalan poet, Carles Cardó. After his adherence to the PCI, he took part in several demonstrations. In May 1949, Pasolini attended the Peace Congress in Paris. Observing the struggles of workers and peasants, and watching the clashes of protesters with Italian police, he began to create his first novel.

In October of the same year, Pasolini was charged with the corruption of minors and obscene acts in public places. As a result, he was expelled by the Udine section of the Communist Party and lost the teaching job he had obtained the previous year in Valvasone. Left in a difficult situation, in January 1950 Pasolini moved to Rome with his mother.

He later described this period of his life as very difficult. "I came to Rome from the Friulan countryside. Unemployed for many years; ignored by everybody; driven by the fear to be not as life needed to be". Instead of asking for help from other writers, Pasolini preferred to go his own way. He found a job as a worker in the Cinecittà studios and sold his books in the 'bancarelle' ("sidewalk shops") of Rome. Finally, through the help of the Abruzzese-language poet Vittorio Clemente, he found a job as a teacher in Ciampino, a suburb of the capital.

In these years Pasolini transferred his Friulan countryside inspiration to Rome's suburbs, the infamous borgate where poor proletarian immigrants lived in often horrendous sanitary and social conditions.

Success and charges[link]

In 1954, Pasolini, who now worked for the literary section of Italian state radio, left his teaching job and moved to the Monteverde quarter, publishing La meglio gioventù, his first important collection of dialect poems. His first novel, Ragazzi di vita (English: Hustlers), was published in 1955. The work had great success but was poorly received by the PCI establishment and, most importantly, by the Italian government. It initiated a lawsuit^[specify] against Pasolini and his editor, Garzanti. Though totally exonerated of any charge, Pasolini became a victim of insinuations, especially by the tabloid press.

In 1957, together with Sergio Citti, Pasolini collaborated on Federico Fellini's film Le notti di Cabiria, writing dialogue for the Roman dialect parts. In 1960 he made his debut as an actor in Il gobbo, and co-wrote Long Night in 1943.

His first film as director and screenwriter is Accattone of 1961, again set in Rome's marginal quarters. The movie aroused controversy and scandal. In 1963, the episode "La ricotta", included in the collective movie RoGoPaG, was censored and Pasolini was tried for offence to the Italian state.

During this period Pasolini frequently traveled abroad: in 1961, with Elsa Morante and Alberto Moravia to India (where he went again seven years later); in 1962 to Sudan and Kenya; in 1963, to Ghana, Nigeria, Guinea, Jordan and Israel (where he shot the documentary, Sopralluoghi in Palestina). In 1970 he travelled again to Africa to shoot the documentary, Appunti per un'Orestiade africana.

In 1966 he was a member of the jury at the 16th Berlin International Film Festival.^[1]

In 1967, in Venice, he met and interviewed the American poet Ezra Pound.^[2] They discussed about Italian movement neoavanguardia, arts in general and Pasolini read some verses from the Italian version of Pound's Pisan Cantos.^[2]

The late 1960s and early 1970s were the era of the so-called "student movement". Pasolini, though acknowledging the students' ideological motivations, thought them "anthropologically middle-class" and therefore destined to fail in their attempts at revolutionary change. Regarding the Battle of Valle Giulia, which took place in Rome in March 1968, he said that he sympathized with the police, as they were "children of the poor", while the young militants were exponents of what he called "left-wing fascism". His film of that year, Teorema, was shown at the annual Venice Film Festival in a hot political climate. Pasolini had proclaimed that the Festival would be managed by the directors (see also Works section).

In 1970 Pasolini bought an old castle near Viterbo, several miles north of Rome, where he began to write his last novel, Petrolio, which was never finished. In 1972 he started to collaborate with the extreme-left association Lotta Continua, producing a documentary, 12 dicembre, concerning the Piazza Fontana bombing. The following year he began a collaboration for Italy's most renowned newspaper, Il Corriere della Sera.

At the beginning of 1975 Garzanti published a collection of critical essays, Scritti corsari ("Corsair Writings").

Death[link]

Pasolini was murdered by being run over several times with his own car, dying on 2 November 1975 on the beach at Ostia, near Rome. Pasolini was buried in Casarsa, in his beloved Friuli.

Giuseppe Pelosi, a seventeen-year-old hustler, was arrested and confessed to murdering Pasolini. Thirty years later, on 7 May 2005, he retracted his confession, which he said was made under the threat of violence to his family. He claimed that three people "with a southern accent" had committed the murder, insulting Pasolini as a "dirty communist".^[3]

Other evidence uncovered in 2005 pointed to Pasolini's having been murdered by an extortionist. Testimony by Pasolini's friend Sergio Citti indicated that some of the rolls of film from Salò had been stolen, and that Pasolini had been going to meet with the thieves after a visit to Stockholm, November 2, 1975.^{[4][5][6][7][8]} Despite the Roman police's reopening of the murder case following Pelosi's statement of May 2005, the judges charged with investigating it determined the new elements insufficient for them to continue the inquiry.

Political views[link]

Pasolini generated heated public discussion with controversial analyses of public affairs. For instance, during the disorders of 1969, when the autonomist university students were carrying on a guerrilla-like uprising against the police in the streets of Rome and all the leftist forces declared their complete support for the students, describing the disorders as a civil fight of proletariat against the System, Pasolini, alone among the communists, declared that he was with the police; or, more precisely, with the policemen. He considered them true proletariat, sent to fight for a poor salary and for reasons which they could not understand, against pampered boys of their same age, because they had not had the fortune of being able to study, referring to poliziotti figli di proletari meridionali picchiati da figli di papà in vena di bravate (lit. policemen, sons of proletarian southerners, beaten up by arrogant daddys' boys). This ironic statement, however, did not stop him from contributing to the autonomist Lotta continua movement.

Pasolini was also an ardent critic of consumismo, i.e. consumerism, which he felt had rapidly destroyed Italian society in the late 1960s/early 1970s. He was particularly concerned about the class of the subproletariat, which he portrayed in Accattone, and to which he felt both humanly and artistically drawn. Pasolini observed that the kind of purity which he perceived in the pre-industrial popular culture was rapidly vanishing, a process that he named la scomparsa delle lucciole (lit. "the disappearance of glow-worms"). The joie de vivre of the boys was being rapidly replaced with more bourgeois ambitions such as a house and a family. He described the coprophagia scenes in Salò as a comment on the processed food industry. He often described consumeristic culture as "unreal", as it had been imposed by economic power and had replaced Italy's traditional peasant culture, something that not even fascism had been able to do. In one interview, he said: "I hate with particular vehemency the current power, the power of 1975, which is a power that manipulates bodies in a horrible way; a manipulation that has nothing to envy to that performed by Himmler or Hitler."

He was angered by economic globalization and cultural domination of the North of Italy (around Milan) over other regions, especially the South.^{[citation needed]} He felt this was accomplished through the power of TV. He opposed the gradual disappearance of Italian dialects by writing some of his poetry in Friulan, the regional language of his childhood. Despite his left-wing views, Pasolini opposed the liberalization of abortion laws.^[9]

Sexuality[link]

The LGBT encyclopedia states the following regarding Pasolini's homosexuality:

While openly gay from the very start of his career (thanks to a gay sex scandal that sent him packing from his provincial hometown to live and work in Rome), Pasolini rarely dealt with homosexuality in his movies. The subject is featured prominently in Teorema (1968), where Terence Stamp's mysterious God-like visitor seduces the son and father of an upper-middle-class family; passingly in Arabian Nights (1974), in an idyll between a king and a commoner that ends in death; and, most darkly of all, in Salò (1975), his infamous rendition of the Marquis de Sade's compendium of sexual horrors, The 120 Days of Sodom.^[10]

In 1963 he met "the great love of his life," fifteen-year-old Ninetto Davoli whom he later cast in his 1966 film Uccellacci e uccellini (literally Bad Birds and Little Birds but translated in English as The Hawks and the Sparrows), Pasolini became his mentor and friend. "Even though their sexual relations lasted only a few years, Ninetto continued to live with Pasolini and was his constant companion, as well as appearing in six more of his films."^[11]

Works[link]

Pasolini's first novel Ragazzi di vita (1955) dealt with the Roman lumpenproletariat. The resulting obscenity charges against him were the first of many instances where his art provoked legal problems. Accattone (1961), also about the Roman underworld, also provoked controversy with conservatives, who demanded stricter censorship.

He then directed the black-and-white The Gospel According to St. Matthew (1964). This film is a cinematic adaptation of the life of Jesus (Enrique Irazoqui). While filming it, Pasolini vowed to direct it from the "believer's point of view", but later said that upon viewing the completed work, he realized he had instead expressed his own beliefs.

In his 1966 film, Uccellacci e uccellini (literally Bad Birds and Little Birds but translated in English as The Hawks and the Sparrows), a picaresque - and at the same time mystic - fable, he hired the great Italian comedian Totò to work with one of his preferred "naif" actors, Ninetto Davoli. It was a unique opportunity for Totò to demonstrate that he was a great dramatic actor as well.

In Teorema (Theorem, 1968), starring Terence Stamp as a mysterious stranger, he depicted the sexual coming-apart of a bourgeois family (later repeated by François Ozon in Sitcom and Takashi Miike in Visitor Q).

Later movies centered on sex-laden folklore, such as Boccaccio's Decameron (1971) and Chaucer's Canterbury Tales (1972) and Il fiore delle mille e una notte (literally The Flower of 1001 Nights, released in English as Arabian Nights, 1974). These films are usually grouped as the Trilogy of Life.

His final work, Salò (Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom, 1975), exceeded what most viewers could then stomach in its explicit scenes of intensely sadistic violence. Based on the novel 120 Days of Sodom by the Marquis de Sade, it is considered his most controversial film. In May 2006, Time Out's Film Guide named it the Most Controversial Film of all time.

Legacy[link]

As a director, Pasolini created a picaresque neorealism, showing a sad reality. Many people did not want to see such portrayals in artistic work for public distribution. Mamma Roma (1962), featuring Anna Magnani and telling the story of a prostitute and her son, was an affront to the morality of those times. His works, with their unequaled poetry applied to cruel realities, showing that such realities are less distant from us than we imagine, made a major contribution to change in the Italian psyche.^{[citation needed][12]}

The director also promoted in his works the concept of "natural sacredness," the idea that the world is holy in and of itself. He suggested there was no need for spiritual essence or supernatural blessing to attain this state. Pasolini was an avowed atheist.

General disapproval of Pasolini's work was perhaps caused primarily by his frequent focus on sexual mores, and the contrast between what he presented and publicly sanctioned behavior. While Pasolini's poetry often dealt with his same-sex love interests, this was not the only, or even main, theme. His interest and approach to Italian dialects should also be noted. Much of the poetry was about his highly revered mother. As a sensitive and intelligent man, he depicted certain corners of the contemporary reality as few other poets could do. His poetry was not as well known as his films outside Italy.^{[citation needed][13]}

He had also developed a philosophy of the language mainly related with his studies on Cinema;^[14] this theorical and critical activity was another debated topic by the acclimated cultural background as the collected articles still available today show pretty clearly.^[12][15][16]

These studies can be considered as the foundation of his artistic point of view, as a matter of fact they basically point out two aspects: the language - as English, Italian, dialect or other - is a rigid system in which the human thought is trapped as well; the cinema is the written language of reality which, like any other written language, enable man to see things from the point of view of truth.^[14]

His films won awards at the Berlin Film Festival, Cannes Film Festival, Venice Film Festival, Italian National Syndicate for Film Journalists, Jussi Awards, Kinema Junpo Awards, International Catholic Film Office and New York Film Critics Circle.

Ebbo Demant directed the documentary Das Mitleid ist gestorben about Pasolini.

In 2005 Stefano Battaglia recorded Re: Pasolini in dedication to Pasolini.

Filmography[link]

Feature films[link]

All titles listed below were written and directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini unless stated otherwise. Although obviously Oedipus Rex and Medea are loosely based on plays by Sophocles and Euripides respectively, significant liberties were taken with original texts and titles do not credit anyone except Pasolini. The latter is also true in the case of St. Matthew.

Documentaries[link]

• Sopralluoghi in Palestina per Il Vangelo secondo Matteo (1964)
• Comizi d'amore (Love Meetings, 1964)
• Appunti per un film sull'India (1969)
• Appunti per un romanzo dell'immondizia (1970)
• Le mura di Sana'a (1971)
• 12 Dicembre 1972 (long and short version) (1972)
• Pasolini e la forma della città (1975)
• Appunti per un'Orestiade Africana (Notes Towards an African Orestes, 1975)

Episodes in omnibus films[link]

• La ricotta in RoGoPaG (1963)
• First segment of La rabbia (1963)
• La Terra vista dalla Luna in Le streghe (The Witches, 1967)
• Che cosa sono le nuvole? Capriccio all'Italiana (1968)
• La sequenza del fiore di carta in Amore e rabbia (1969)

Bibliography[link]

Narrative[link]

• Poems
• Ragazzi di vita (The Ragazzi, 1955)
• Una vita violenta (A Violent Life, 1959)
• Il sogno di una cosa (1962)
• Amado Mio - Atti Impuri (1982, originally composed in 1948)
• Alì dagli occhi azzurri (1965)
• Reality (The Poets' Encyclopedia, 1979)
• Petrolio (1992, incomplete)

Poetry[link]

• La meglio gioventù (1954)
• Le ceneri di Gramsci (1957)
• L'usignolo della chiesa cattolica (1958)
• La religione del mio tempo (1961)
• Poesia in forma di rosa (1964)
• Trasumanar e organizzar (1971)
• La nuova gioventù (1975)
• Roman Poems. Pocket Poets #41 (1986)

Essays[link]

• Passione e ideologia (1960)
• Canzoniere italiano, poesia popolare italiana (1960)
• Empirismo eretico (1972)
• Lettere luterane (1976)
• Le belle bandiere (1977)
• Descrizioni di descrizioni (1979)
• Il caos (1979)
• La pornografia è noiosa (1979)
• Scritti corsari (1975)
• Lettere (1940–1954) (Letters, 1940-54, 1986)

Theatre[link]

• Orgia (1968)
• Porcile (1968)
• Calderón (1973)
• Affabulazione (1977)
• Pilade (1977)
• Bestia da stile (1977)

Notes[link]

References[link]

• Aichele, George. "Translation as De-canonization: Matthew's Gospel According to Pasolini - filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini - Critical Essay." Cross Currents (2002). FindArticles.
• Distefano, John. "Picturing Pasolini." Art Journal (1997).
• Eloit, Audrene. "Oedipus Rex by Pier Paolo Pasolini The Palimpsest: Rewriting and the Creation of Pasolini's Cinematic Language." Literature Film Quarterly (2004). FindArticles.
• Fabbro, Elena (ed.). Il mito greco nell'opera di Pasolini. Atti del Convegno Udine-Casarsa della Delizia, 24-26 ottobre 2002. Udine: Forum (2004). ISBN 88-8420-230-2
• Forni, Kathleen. "A "cinema of poetry": What Pasolini Did to Chancer's Canterbury Tales." Literature Film Quarterly (2002). FindArticles.
• Frisch, Anette. "Francesco Vezzolini: Pasolini Reloaded." Interview, Rutgers University Alexander Library, New Brunwick, NJ.
• Green, Martin. "The Dialectic Adaptation."
• Greene, Naomi. Pier Paolo Pasilini: Cinema as Heresy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1990.
• Meyer-Krahmer, Benjamin. "Transmediality and Pastiche as Techniques in Pasolini’s Art Production", in: P.P.P. - Pier Paolo Pasolini and death, eds. Bernhart Schwenk, Michael Semff, Ostfildern 2005, p. 109 - 118
• Passannanti, Erminia. The Sacred Transgressed. Pasolini, the Roman Catholic Church and Secularity in the short film "La ricotta", Brindin Press (2009).
• Passannanti, Erminia. Il Cristo dell'Eresia. Sacro e censura nel cinema di Pier Paolo Pasolini, Joker (2009).
• Passannanti, Erminia. Deconstruction and redefinition of the Italian Catholic Identity in Pier Paolo Pasolini's La ricotta, in Italy on Screen: National Identity and Italian Imaginary, Lucy Bolton and Christina Siggers Manson (eds.), Series New Studies in European Cinema series, Peter Lang (2010).
• Pugh, Tison. "Chaucerian Fabliaux, Cinematic Fabliau: Pier Paolo Pasolini's I racconti di Canterbury.", Literature Film Quarterly (2004). FindArticles.
• Restivo, Angelo. The Cinema of Economic Miracles: Visuality and Modernization in the Italian Art Film. London: Duke UP, 2002.
• Rohdie, Sam. The Passion of Pier Paolo Pasolini. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana UP, 1995.
• Rumble, Patrick A. Allegories of contamination: Pier Paolo Pasolini's Trilogy of life. Toronto: University of Toronto P, 1996.
• Schwartz, Barth D. Pasolini Requiem. 1st ed. New York: Pantheon Books, 1992.
• Siciliano, Enzo. Pasolini: A Biography. Trans. John Shepley. New York: Random House, 1982.
• Viano, Maurizio. A Certain Realism: Making Use of Pasolini's Film Theory and Practice. Berkeley: University of California P, 1993.
• Willimon, William H. "Faithful to the script", Christian Century (2004).

External links[link]

• Pier Paolo Pasolini at the Internet Movie Database
• Pasolini on Filmgalerie451
• Piers Paolo Pasolini, Italian website with extensive commentary
• "Piers Paolo Pasolini", Senses of Cinema
• BBC News report on the reopening of the murder case
• Guy Flatley: "The Atheist Who Was Obsessed with God", MovieCrazed
• Doug Ireland, "Restoring Pasolini", ZMag
• Maria Callas in Pasolini's Medea
• Pasolini's own notes on Salo from 1974
• Pier Paolo Pasolini poems Original Italian text.
• Video (in Italian): Pasolini on the destructive impact of television (interrupted and half-censored by Enzo Biagi)
• Italian website dedicated to Pasolini
• Pasolini's second to last interview, long believed to have been lost