Mimmo Calopresti and Pier Paolo Pasolini: the Calabrian director, author, among other things, of the documentary «Cutro Calabria Italia», on the tragic shipwreck of migrants which, on 26 February 2023, caused the death of 94 people – a tragedy that the Friulian poet had somehow foreseen sixty years earlier: the poem «Prophecy» is quoted in the docu –, and the multifaceted intellectual, whose figure it is celebrated this year, on the 50th anniversary of his death, and with particular attention in Calabria, with which he had a very strong relationship.
Calopresti, author of successful films (from «The word love exists» to «L’abbuffata» and «Aspromonte»), has also dedicated much of his career to documentaries of great civil and social commitment and has often linked, as he himself explains, his name to that of Pasolini. Unfortunately today, for organizational reasons, the meeting as part of the event «Pasolini and… A journey into the world of Pasolini fifty years after his death», underway in Lamezia Terme and curated by the Lametino Library System in collaboration with the Department of Humanistic Studies of the University of Calabria, with the artistic direction of Carlo Fanelli, was cancelled.
His documentary is very linked to Pasolini, especially for the poem “Prophecy”, from 1964, in which he showed impressive foresight on the very current topic of the landings. I know this has always affected her greatly. How and why?
«Meanwhile, I was very impressed by the relationship between Pasolini, the film “Gospel according to Matthew” and the places where it was filmed, namely Cutro and its surroundings. Places that Pasolini frequented a lot and in which he recognized not only the closeness of the landscape, but also the strong spiritual impact. Cutro and Calabria as a place of the spirit and therefore the place where Jesus was born, also given the choice of Mary, the mother of Christ, in Margherita Caruso, a very young girl from Crotone. And then precisely “Prophecy” or “Ali with blue eyes”, a prophetic text fully realized today: “They will land in Crotone etc.”. Pasolini was always capable of truth because he looked at the world with the eyes of poetry, a realist prophet I would say.”
Yet Pasolini’s relationship with Cutro was troubled: the Municipality sued him for how the town had been described in the 1959 reportage “The Long Road of Sand”, in which he had used the word “bandits”. How do you interpret the question?
«Pasolini was used to being persecuted, so he tried to be able to respond to the accusations with a kindness that was usual for him. He clarified what he meant when he used the word “bandits”, and continued to frequent Crotone and its surroundings to make his films. The persecutions reinvigorated his spirit.”
His bond with Pasolini has lasted for a long time, at least since 2001, the year of his participation in the documentary film by Laura Betti and Paolo Costella “Pier Paolo Pasolini and the reason for a dream”. And then, from his documentary, shot in 2005, “How can you not love Pasolini – Notes for a film about garbage”. Does it remind us of these experiences?
«Laura Betti always tried to host in her dinners those who she defined as the Pasolinis, that is, those who had known him and had worked together, for example Enzo Siciliano and Bernardo Bertolucci, and then also newcomers to the cinema. Among these me, Mario Martone and others. In the end, in those evenings we often talked about Pasolini, and Laura developed this film about Pier Paolo together with us, her followers. She was in charge of the choices to be made and we were at her disposal. Instead, “Immondezza” was born while I was looking for material at the Audiovisual Archive of the Workers’ Movement. I found a 16 mm celluloid pizza with material shot by Pasolini for a documentary on garbage collectors who had started a tough fight against their social and also physical condition. At that time, mechanization had not yet been introduced to clean up the city and the Roman palaces. This very tough fight was carried out by the only garbage collectors they had against the whole city. Pasolini, however, practically alone, fought alongside those workers and began to shoot a film that should have been part of another more important one around the world against “The Garbage”. What remains of that experience is the extraordinary proof of Pasolini as a documentary filmmaker who managed to make poetic cinema in whatever situation he found himself in.”
Also in 2017 he dedicated the docufilm “Garbage – Beauty will save the world” to Pasolini, the story of Roberto Cavallo’s race against waste…
«Yes, the journey from Vesuvius to Etna in a hurry, trying to clear the rubbish along the way, seemed to me to be a very Pasolini-esque operation. That’s the reason for that title.”
The recent death of Nicola Pietrangeli made me remember his 2009 documentary “The red shirt”, dedicated to the 1976 Davis Cup final. What is his memory?
«Pietrangeli had put the team together. But it was Adriano Panatta who was the true dominator of that moment, with his choice to wear a red shirt against the Chilean dictator Pinochet. Pietrangeli was a great champion but also a man of the world, very important in Italian sport, but also the voice of an Italy that has now passed away.”
In the current, rather pessimistic climate of Italian cinema, what is your position? When will you be able to return to shooting a fiction feature film?
«I am ready to return, I would like to talk about the Italy around us with a courageous look, but the current difficulties are slowing down the project. But I’m sure I’ll be back on set soon.”