Tënk is proud to be the broadcasting partner of PPP/RRR : Pier Paolo Pasolini / Riprese, Reprises, Retakes, a major international event celebrating Pasolini's 100th anniversary !

"The new world is established. The power to decide one's destiny, at least formally, is in the hands of the people. The ancient primordial deities coexist with the new world of reason and freedom. But how to conclude? The definitive conclusion does not exist, it remains in suspense. A new nation is born, its problems are infinite. But problems are not solved, they are lived. And life is slow. The march towards the future does not have a solution of continuity. The work of a people knows neither rhetoric nor delay. Its future is in its fever of the future. And its fever is a great patience. "

- Pier Paolo Pasolini, Notes Towards an African Orestes (1970)

Poet, filmmaker, playwright, novelist, essayist, heretical thinker, committed intellectual : Pier Paolo Pasolini (1922-1975) made a breach, he took refuge in the interstices; those of a world that saw technical rationality triumph (we think here of nuclear power), of a world where the long march of independence foreshadowed the end of history... But there is no end with Pasolini, everything is open and his dialectic never knows resolution.

Pasolini will make tabula rasa of a fascist past by reviving its archives: by the editing, he will testify of what happened (La Rabbia, 1963); by the superimposition, he will show the guilty innocence of the new youth that refuses to be conscious of its historical being (The Paper Flower Sequence, 1969); by mixing them to scouting, he will seek an alternative in what persists of archaic (Notes Towards an African Orestes, 1970).

What remains of those ancient Furies who became Eumenides?

100 years after his birth, we have decided to celebrate his vitality – we are tired of wallowing in the mystery of his death. Pasolini lives – and the dialogues we are proposing here are a vibrant testimony of this. We Are Become Death (Jean-Gabriel Périot, 2014), perhaps... but not only. Saint-Louis (in Senegal) disappears before the rising waters (Xaar Yallà, Mamadou Khouma Gueye, 2021) but something remains. Survivals, connection, hope, Insurgencies (Groupe Épopée, 2013).

The PPP/RRR event is a great international celebration with kaleidoscopic allure that will allow us to reflect on the actuality of the thought of an inactual Pasolini. What is Pasolini's legacy on a new generation of artists, scholars, critics and audiences? What is the impact of his archive on film and media scholarship; on the appropriations and misappropriations of his work by different cultural groups, from new queer communities to conservative movements to post-colonial theories.

Where Pasolini thought of incompleteness, how to continue, without ever ending, the work to which he invited us? The layover that we propose here is an attempt to do just that.

Viva Paci

Professor, École des médias, UQAM
Co-director for the Labdoc

Julie Paquette

Associate Professor, School of Ethics, Social Justice and Public Service
Saint Paul University

Rosanna Maule

Professor of Film Studies
Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema, Concordia University

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