Pier Paolo Pasolini is best known as one of the most celebrated and controversial filmmakers of twentieth-century Italy. But beyond his cinematic achievements, he was equally prolific as a novelist, poet, painter, actor, literary critic, and public intellectual.

An iconoclastic critic of bourgeois social norms and an artistic maverick whose unorthodox and eclectic style embraced both high and low culture, Pasolini did much to shape and challenge Italian thought and identity during the post-war boom years, inspiring both veneration and vilification. To mark the hundredth anniversary of his birth, the Italian Cultural Institute of San Francisco will present a series of public events exploring his life, his work, and his legacy during the months of September and October 2022.