Imagens da urbanidade e a cidade-síntese africana na Oréstia, de Pier Paolo Pasolini

Abstract

The text analyzes historically the presentation of African cities in the film Appunti per un'Orestiade Africana (1969), by filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini (PPP), which proposes a historical-mythical interpretation of late 1960's Africa through the Aeschylus’s The Oresteia. PPP uses the play to interpret the historical transformations of Africa at that time, portraying urban environments as "neocapitalist", but identifying too in these the signs of archaic culture that showed the resistance of what he called the "Third World" subproletarian culture. We analyze the tropes and icons used as ethnographic keys of interpreting the "other" in the PPP's film and texts. Using iconology and narratology we address the following questions: What is the uniqueness of urbans landscapes presented by PPP? What were and where were the tropes mobilized by the filmmaker? What is the way of seeing/thinking African and Italian otherness of the late 1960s?