The sentence for contempt of religion, issued by the Rome Tribunal on the 7th March 1963 to Pier Paolo Pasolini for his episode La ricotta, seems to have jeopardized all his new film projects, including a proposed film on Matthew’s Gospels. Producer Alfredo Bini had the idea of organizing a trip to the Holy Land, for which the poet-director would be accompanied by Don Andrea Carraro and Lucio Settimio Caruso of the Pro Civitate Christiana Association in Assisi, in order to produce a documentary that could help persuade possible financiers that his intentions were underpinned by genuine respect for the holy texts. The journey to Galilee and Jordan took place between the 27th June and 11th July 1963 during which directors of photography Otello Martelli and Aldo Pennelli filmed a series of images that were then edited into a medium-length film, without Pasolini’s supervision but faithfully reflecting his aesthetic. Bini showed it to financiers who responded favorably to the project. A travel diary that includes a lengthy sequence in an Israeli kibbutz, where Pasolini stopped to question the residents on their living conditions, this was the first film of his Notes, essentially a series of notebooks comprised of images and sounds documenting his search for locations and figures which could be useful for a future film. However, it was the only one of Pasolini’s Notes related to a project that he ultimately completed. In actual fact, before leaving Pasolini had already decided to shoot his Gospel in southern Italy, because it was more archaic than Palestine. It is therefore no coincidence that the voice-over continually references Calabria, Puglia, Cutro, Crotone, Massafra, and other cities, “seeing” the scorched desolation of the southern Italian landscape behind the real images of the places where Christ preached and was martyred. The trip would inspire him to write the poem Israel, which was later included in Poem in the Shape of a Rose (1964).

Roberto Chiesi