Appunti per un’Orestiade africana

In late 1968, Pier Paolo Pasolini travelled to Uganda and Tanzania searching for locations and actors for his planned African Oresteia. Upon his return, he arranged a meeting with African students – who tell him politely but in no uncertain terms what they thought about his ideas…

In late 1968, Pier Paolo Pasolini began getting serious about the idea of remaking Aeschylus’ Oresteia in Africa by travelling to Uganda and Tanzania looking for possible locations as well as actors. Upon his return, he arranged a meeting with African students at the Sapienza University of Rome – who tell him politely but in no uncertain terms what they thought about his ideas…

This was the end of the project. It says a lot about Pasolini, though, that he turned this failure into a film in which he presents himself as a Westerner who fell for the myths of a somewhat Rousseauian vision of a traditional Africa – when indeed he was looking there for a mythical Italian South which he had always idolised. And as Ulrich Köhler’s Gavagai, which also screens this year at IFFR, shows: the questions Pasolini in the end asks are still pertinent, if maybe in a different way from half a century ago…

– Olaf Möller

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