Pier Paolo Pasolini, (born March 5, 1922, Bologna, Italy—died Nov. 2, 1975, Ostia, near Rome), Italian motion-picture director, poet, and novelist, noted for his socially critical, stylistically unorthodox films.
The son of an Italian army officer, Pasolini was educated in schools of the various cities of northern Italy where his father was successively posted. He attended the University of Bologna, studying art history and literature. Pasolini’s stay of refuge among the oppressed peasantry of the Friuli region during World War II led to his later becoming a Marxist, albeit an unorthodox one. His poverty-stricken existence in Rome during the 1950s furnished the material for his first two novels, Ragazzi di vita (1955; The Ragazzi) and Una vita violenta (1959; A Violent Life). These brutally realistic depictions of the poverty and squalor of slum life in Rome were similar in character to his first film, Accattone (1961), and all three works dealt with the lives of thieves, prostitutes, and other denizens of the Roman underworld.
Edited by Marco Delogu; Texts by Andrea Cortellessa, Silvia De Laude; Photographs by Elisabetta Benassi, Jacopo Benassi, Plinio De Martiis, Pino Musi, Sabrina Ragucci, Giovanna Silva.