In 1964, Pier Paolo Pasolini spent a summer getting Italian men and women from different social backgrounds to talk about sexual norms and freedoms. But between the intellectual and bourgeois elites who dodge the issue, claiming to have no complexes or inhibitions, and the working classes sheltering behind tradition and unchangeable customs, very little is articulated. There aren’t enough words, there’s no doubt about it, limiting the possibility of questioning the conformism that Pasolini’s come to shake up – so attention is paid instead to the bodies and faces. The beauty and sensuality of the images express the passion with which Pasolini films the bodies, often stripped naked, of the people gathered around him. Through them, we understand the complexity of repressed desires, and the fear of calling one’s sexuality into question and challenging society’s rules, but also the desire, either timid or determined, not to live as our elders lived…

Lysa Heurtier Manzanares
Filmmaker