Criterion To Release A Massive Collection Of Films From Italian Iconoclast Pier Paolo Pasolini This June

The Criterion Collection has officially announced that the expansive Pasolini 101 will be available on Blu-Ray on June 27, 2023. The nine-disc set will include nine of Italian iconoclast Pier Paolo Pasolini’s beloved films along with an impressive array of special features.

Released in celebration of the 101st anniversary of Pasolini’s birth, this collector’s set provides an essential window onto a transformative period for an artist whose legacy remains a wellspring of freedom and revolutionary force. Including nine provocative, lyrical, often scandal-inducing films from the 1960s—Accattone, Mamma Roma, Love Meetings, The Gospel According to Matthew, The Hawks and the Sparrows, Oedipus Rex, Teorema, Porcile, and Medea—the decade in which this celebrated poet, novelist, and intellectual embarked on a feature filmmaking career, Pasolini 101 is a monument to the artist’s daring vision of cinema.

Also included: anthology films by Pasolini; archival interviews with filmmakers and scholars; documentaries on Pasolini’s life and career; deluxe packaging including a 100-page book featuring an essay and notes on the films by critic James Quandt, and writings and drawings by Pasolini; and much more. Check out a trailer for this set here.

One of the most original and controversial thinkers of the twentieth century, Italian polymath Pier Paolo Pasolini embodied a multitude of often seemingly contradictory ideologies and identities—and he expressed them all in his provocative, lyrical, and indelible films. Relentlessly concerned with society’s downtrodden and marginalized, he elevated pimps, hustlers, sex workers, and vagabonds to the realm of saints, while depicting actual saints with a radical earthiness. Traversing the sacred and the profane, the ancient and the modern, the mythic and the personal, the nine uncompromising, often scandal-inciting features he made in the 1960s still stand—on this, the 101st anniversary of his birth—as a monument to his daring vision of cinema as a form of resistance.

NINE-BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION COLLECTOR’S SET FEATURES

New 4K digital restorations of seven films and 2K digital restorations of Teorema and Medea, with uncompressed monaural soundtracks
Two shorts made by director Pier Paolo Pasolini for anthology films: La ricotta (1963) and The Sequence of the Paper Flower (1969)
Two documentaries made by Pasolini during his travels
New program on Pasolini’s visual style as told through his personal writing, narrated by actor Tilda Swinton and writer Rachel Kushner
Audio commentaries on Accattone and Teorema
Documentaries on Pasolini’s life and career featuring archival interviews with the director and his close collaborators
Episode from 1966 of the French television program Cinéastes de notre temps
Interviews with filmmakers and scholars
Trailers
New English subtitle translations
PLUS: Deluxe packaging, including a 100-page book featuring an essay and notes on the films by critic James Quandt, and writings and drawings by Pasolini