Pasolini's Poetic Gaze in Palestine

Pasolini’s Poetic Gaze in Palestine  

Curated by Zeina Abedrabo 

Friday 21 March 2025 at the Millennium Film Workshop, 167 Wilson Ave, Brooklyn, NY 

This program presents Seeking Locations in Palestine (1965) by Pier Paolo Pasolini and Pasolini  Pa Palestine* (2005) by Ayreen Anastas. These two films interrogate seeing, framing, and representing  Palestine through the cinematic gaze. Pasolini's journey to the Holy Land, initially a location scouting trip  for The Gospel According to Matthew, becomes a meditation on the impossibility of finding an "authentic"  biblical landscape - his disillusionment with the modernity of Israel and the perceived wretchedness of  Palestinian communities projects a Eurocentric vision, where history and myth are expected to manifest as  legible, picturesque settings. His camera objectifies, aestheticizes, and ultimately rejects the present reality  in favor of a constructed past, leading him to relocate his production to Southern Italy. 

Anastas' film retraces Pasolini's footsteps four decades later, using…