Pasolini’s greatest passion: football

Pasolini the poet, Pasolini the narrator, Pasolini the director, the polemicist and even the independent Ante Letram. A man, even more than an intellectual, whose artistic and literary productions – even more so in the year of the celebrations of the centenary of his birth – have been analyzed. Pasolini’s personal side remains, consisting above all of great sentiments. Among the most famous is the love of football, both as a fan and as an amateur player: the subject of a fascinating exhibition, the solitude of the right wing. Pasolini and Football, which Cinemazero will organize at the end of April at the Bertoia Gallery in Pordenone, with about a hundred photos, text and unpublished memorabilia.

bologna fan Before declaring to Enzo Biagi that he would like to be a “good footballer”, because “after literature and eros, football is one of my greatest pleasures”, in 1971 Pasolini defined football in an article published in El Giorno as “the last sacred representation of our time.” His passion – as explained by exhibition curator Piero Colossi – “was born not in Friuli, but in Bologna, his native city. Since 1935, the Bologna Football Club has won almost four titles in a row and Pasolini has become a huge fan, so much so that he asked his idol Piavatti to sign the only one in his life.” Then I write: “The afternoons I spent playing football in the Caprara stadiums were without a doubt the best of my life.”

Founder of two teams – As he moved for summer vacation to Casarsa, at his mother’s family home, Pasolini began playing with friends at the Casarsa football club in the sports field behind the railway which, Colossi recalls, “used a room in the Lyon hotel as a dressing room of gold.” In July 1941, his friend Luciano Serra told about the adventures of the infantry from Friuli as follows: “I played with good skill, as a left winger with Casarsa, having lost 4-0 to Azano Veneto (Decimo, editor). Tomorrow Sunday is a game with Camino. ” At the end of the war, Pasolini was among the promoters of the birth of the Sas Casarsa (Society of Sports Arts), which found its headquarters in the fall of 1946 in the same places as the Academiuta di lenga furlana. In the same year, he also co-founded the Sangiovannes Sports Federation, and since 1947, Colossi recalls, “he also began writing about football, as a reporter for Il Friuli Sportivo”.

national captain Some of the iconic images of Pasolini are those in the football fields of Roman villages, amidst the tall buildings, where he met the boys who later became the protagonists of his novels, Ragazzi di Vita and Una Vita Vita. “In the sixties – adds Kolossi – he was also one of the creators of the team called the Actors and Singers, which later became the National Entertainment team, which led the captaincy for a long time. In the spring of 1975, a few months before his assassination, he organized a football match in Parma Between the squad of Salo and the squad of Novecento, which Bernardo Bertolucci called a few kilometers away, he won 5 to 2. There he was. The young Parma Primavera player, Carlo Ancelotti, was “later appointed” as instrument maker in the Novecento squad!