Wie de waarheid zegt moet dood

Pier Paolo Pasolini was perhaps the most controversial filmmaker in Italy's history. Like Hearst did with the printed word, Pasolini took the art film to the slums - the average working class. Aside from famously adapting great classical works (CHAUCER, BOCCACCIO, SADE, etc.) he also penned scripts for his peers Bernardo Bertolucci and Federico Fellini. The documentary does a fine job addressing Pasolini's literary prowess, simply reading excerpts from his brilliant poetry (stark and reflective, perfect companion to his cinematic works). A fine profile on this genius. Nice touch is that it is partially in English, rather than being completely subtitled like any other movie about Pasolini.

Whoever Says the Truth Shall Die (1981)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Strange documentary from the Netherlands, which talks of the life, poetry and films of the controversial Pier Paolo Pasolini who was brutally murdered in 1975. The official cause of death is that the director took a 17-year-old boy for a walk, made sexual advances towards him and then the boy killed him. The conspiracy theory on display here is that the government and Christians had something to do with the murder due to the director's Salo and some poems he wrote towards the end of his life. For the most part this documentary is a complete bore that really doesn't come to life until the final ten minutes when the murder is looked at. The best piece of evidence given are the photos of Pasolini's body, which was beaten to a pulp and then driven over by a car. This is the evidence, which claims the boy didn't do the killings even though those being interviewed admit that Pasolini was the sexually aggressive type. The documentary never talks to anyone on the opposite side so we never really get any clear answers to what really happened. The stuff discussing his poems and films isn't very well done and doesn't really shine a light on anything because all the film really does is remind us that he was a homosexual every ten minutes.

A 'classic' one hour documentary film made by unprolific Dutch documentary filmmaker Philo Bregstein (apparently in 1981) about Italian filmmaker and poet Pier Paolo Pasolini. Co-written by Bregstein with Michele Garlatti, it is described as not a biopic/documentary, but a film looking to explore the themes of Pasolini's life, work, and death (on the 2nd November1975), as it features archive footage of Pasolini, film clips, and interviews with Laura Betti, Bernardo Bertolucci (who mistook Pasolini for a thief when he first met him), Alberto Moravia and Maria Antoinette Macciocchi. Discussing editing as a means of getting at the truth, Pasolini's cinematic influences were apparently directors such as Dreyer and Mizoguchi, and at the time of his murder (supposedly by 17 year old Giuseppe Pelosi) he was working on an unfinished novel called 'Petrolio' whilst railing against people in the Italian establishment 'committing treason in the service of a foreign power'. Bertolucci and Moravia do not agree entirely on the circumstances surrounding Pasolini's murder, in a documentary which raises more questions than it answers.