Notes Towards an African Orestes
Pier Paolo Pasolini has a project for a film adaptation of Aeschylus *Orestia* that he would like to have played by Africans. He travels through Uganda and Tanzania in search of people who could convincingly play Orestes, Agamemnon or Clytemnestra. At the same time, he reads passages from Aeschylus *Orestia*, theorizes about ancient Greece, about archaic Africa in the process of tipping over into modernism. Back in Italy, he presents a selection of the collected images to a group of African students at the University of Rome. The final film will never see the light of day.
| Director | Pier Paolo Pasolini |
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I came out of the screening of *Notes Towards an African Orestes* a few years ago at the Cinéma du réel festival. It set off red flags in my head: a film by a white director looking at a continent that he considers, in spite of himself, as the "third world". I felt something like that... The same signals came to me when I saw *ABC Africa*, which I consider to be a more than clumsy film, even though I love Kiarostami's cinema! I've been carrying this Pasolini "notebook" around in my head and despite the red flags, on every page I find what I'm looking for in cinema: people, their faces, their shared words and the strength of their silence. All this emerges from the street to those who know how to see!
Mamadou Khouma Gueye
Filmmaker, programmer and coxer
Presented in dialogue with Xaar Yallà by Mamadou Khouma Gueye
With the support of
-
FR - Carnet de notes pour une Orestie africaine
1h12
Language: Français
- Année 1970
- Pays Italy
- Durée 72
- Producteur IDI Cinematografica, I Film Dell'Orso, Rai
- Langue Italian
- Sous-titres French
- Résumé court Pasolini travels through Uganda and Tanzania in search of people who could embody Orestes in a convincing way for his filmic adaptation of Aeschylus' Orestia.
- Ordre 1
I came out of the screening of *Notes Towards an African Orestes* a few years ago at the Cinéma du réel festival. It set off red flags in my head: a film by a white director looking at a continent that he considers, in spite of himself, as the "third world". I felt something like that... The same signals came to me when I saw *ABC Africa*, which I consider to be a more than clumsy film, even though I love Kiarostami's cinema! I've been carrying this Pasolini "notebook" around in my head and despite the red flags, on every page I find what I'm looking for in cinema: people, their faces, their shared words and the strength of their silence. All this emerges from the street to those who know how to see!
Mamadou Khouma Gueye
Filmmaker, programmer and coxer
Presented in dialogue with Xaar Yallà by Mamadou Khouma Gueye
With the support of
-
FR - Carnet de notes pour une Orestie africaine
Duration: 1h12Language: Français1h12
- Année 1970
- Pays Italy
- Durée 72
- Producteur IDI Cinematografica, I Film Dell'Orso, Rai
- Langue Italian
- Sous-titres French
- Résumé court Pasolini travels through Uganda and Tanzania in search of people who could embody Orestes in a convincing way for his filmic adaptation of Aeschylus' Orestia.
- Ordre 1
