Scholar and lover of music and popular culture, university professor Gianni Borgna first came into contact with Pasolini’s work via his poems. “Despite being known in Italy for his films or for the fact that he is a controversial character, Pasolini is, above all, a great poet”, he explains. In 1963, Gianni Borgna got his first opportunity to see the man that Italians with power loved to hate because he was “homosexual, a communist and a poet”. In that spring of 1963, Pier Paolo Pasolini spoke before a group of young anti-fascists about the problems he had experienced with the premiere of the film La Ricotta, for which he had stood trial. “I was young and struck by him, I thought he was a very controversial figure and yes, the things he said were tough, but in fact, he was a gentle and sweet man who spoke to the young people on equal terms”, Borgna recalls.
Gianni Borgna ended up forming part of Pasolini’s circle of friends, and he has written several works on the Italian intellectual, the most recent two being the script of the film Profezia. L’Africa di Pasolini (2013) and the play for theatre with Irma Palazzo Pier Paolo, poeta delle ceneri (2012). This year he has been involved in what for him has been one of the most captivating Pasolini projects: working as curator, together with Jordi Balló and Alain Bergala, of the exhibition “Pasolini Roma” which you can now visit at the CCCB and which in the future will travel to Paris, Rome and Berlin. In this interview, Borgna describes the character of his friend.
