The Gospel According to St. Matthew

Part of the series
Pasolini: Politics & Poetry
Curated by Ara H. Merjian and Mila Tenaglia
On the 50th anniversary of the death of Pier Paolo Pasolini (1922-1975)

Screening
Il Vangelo secondo Matteo
(The Gospel According to St. Matthew, 1964, 98 min.)
In ITALIAN with ENGLISH subtitles

Written and directed by
Pier Paolo Pasolini

Starring
Enrique Irazoqui, Margherita Caruso, Susanna Pasolini

American Premiere of the original colored version
Restored by the Arco Foundation

Followed by a Q&A with
Stefano Albertini, NYU
in conversation with
Antonio Monda, NYU

In ENGLISH

Pier Paolo Pasolini’s The Gospel According to St. Matthew (1964) is a powerful, poetic retelling of the life of Christ. Filmed in Southern Italy with non-professional actors, it blends realism and spirituality in a timeless reflection on faith and humanity. Originally shot in color, the film was distributed and has to this day always been seen in black-and-white. The Arco Foundation has restored the original colored version being screened, on this occasion, for the first time in North America.

Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimò presents Pasolini: Politics & Poetry, on the fiftieth anniversary of Pier Paolo Pasolini’s death. The artist endures as a figure of controversy and contradiction, yet this milestone demands more than commemoration: it calls for a critical interrogation of his literary and cinematic oeuvre—vast, fractured, and unruly—alongside the political and intellectual commitments that continue to resist facile categorization. Curated by Professor and author Ara H. Merjian and creative producer Mila Tenaglia, the program runs from November 3 to 14 and pursues a multidisciplinary engagement with Pasolini’s work, traversing the languages of music, cinema, theater, and scholarly inquiry. Rather than merely honoring his legacy, the initiative seeks to restore the vitality and provocation of his thought and poetics, with particular attention to how contemporary artists and scholars have reinterpreted, contested, and claimed his intellectual and artistic inheritance. Pasolini: Politics & Poetry extends beyond screenings of Pasolini’s films—drawn from cinetecas, the Criterion Collection, and the Archivi Luce—to embrace works by directors and filmmakers who have discovered in his vision a wellspring for creative dialogue. This convergence of past and present positions the initiative not as a nostalgic ritual but as a living encounter with one of the twentieth century’s most formidable intellectuals, enriched by performances, a video installation exhibition, conversations, and academic interventions. Pasolini’s death—among the most notorious and contested episodes in Italian history—was not simply the murder of a homosexual man, but an event in which politics, literature, and society collided in ways that remain unresolved.