An exhibition of images and words in Lisbon celebrates the 100th anniversary of the birth of Pier Paolo Pasolini. ‘’La lunga strada di sabbia’’ (“The Long Sand Road”), a photographic exhibition curated by Silvia Di Paolo and organized by the Italian Cultural Institute in Lisbon under the aegis of the Italian Embassy in Portugal and in partnership with the Sociedade Nacional de Belas Artes and the Festa do Cinema Italiano in Portugal, displays pictures in black and white by Paolo Di Paolo, as well as videos, archive material and texts by Pier Paolo Pasolini.
The material on show was used in a report on the summer vacations of Italians published in three instalments on the monthly “Successo” in the summer of 1959. The historical context is the start of the economic miracle when Italy wanted to forget the misery of war and pursued a new idea of wellbeing. At that point the writer and the photographer depart on a long trip by car, planning to drive down the coasts of Italy, from the Tyrrhenian to the Mediterranean Sea, From Ventimiglia to Ostia, from Torvaianica to Sicily, from Santa Maria di Leuca to Trieste, to document the strenuous path towards “progress” and the contradictions it triggered. “Pasolini was pursuing a long-lost world of literary ghosts, an Italy that no longer existed – Di Paolo recalls – while I was seeking an Italy that looked at the future.” The trip aimed to discover the way we were, and to compare dreams, contradictions, past and present illusions, along the never-ending sand road. The exhibition will run until 16 April.
