For someone who died in 1975, Pier Paolo Pasolini continues to exercise an enormous shadow over Italy. Wherever we were – Rome, Bologna, Florence – flyers inevitably found new ways to repurpose his name.

In this instance, the subject was Pasolini himself. Advertisement for a documentary about the late leftwing director at the Cox 18 spazio sociale. Casa occupata Via Dei Transiti T28 door, Milano, January 2010.

Discourse about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in Italy is highly unique. It’s complicated, on the one hand by Italy’s own recent colonial history in the Middle East (Libya), and its burgeoning Arab population on the other.

I’m working on a series of essays trying to tackle the subject, in non-traditional ways. One avenue I’m working on is film. This is a screen shot from Pasolini’s brilliant Sopralluoghi in Palestina, shot in Israel in the early 1960s.

About half way through the documentary, the legendary director says something to the effect of “It’s not Biblical enough here.”

Zurich was full of surprises. We’d just watched Accatone, too.

Read the fine print. Anti-fascist flyer, Bologna, one week later.