THE TRILOGY OF LIFE - BLU-RAY

Pasolini: Trilogy of Life (3-disc Blu-ray)
Directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini

In the early 1970s, the great Italian poet, philosopher and filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini (Salò, or The 120 Days of Sodom) brought to the screen a trio of masterpieces of premodern world literature - Giovanni Boccaccio's The Decameron, Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales, and The Thousand and One Nights (often known as The Arabian Nights) - and in doing so created his most uninhibited and extravagant work, which he titles his Trilogy of Life. In this brazen and bawdy triptych, the director set out to challenge consumer capitalism and celebrate the uncorrupted human body while commenting on contemporary sexual and religious mores and hypocrisies. His scatological humour and rough-hewn sensuality leave all modern standards of decency behind; these are physical, provocative, and wildly entertaining films, all extraordinarily designed by Dante Ferretti (Hugo) and featuring evocative music by Ennio Morricone.

Special features:

• Presented in High Definition
• Includes both Italian-language and English-language versions of all three films
• Notes for an African Oresteia (1970, 73 mins): Pasolini s visual notes for an unrealised film project
• Pasolini and the Italian Genre Film (2009, 37 mins)
• Deleted scenes (1974, 21 mins): deleted scenes from Pasolini's Arabian Nights
• Original trailers for all three films
• Fully illustrated booklet with essays, reviews and biographies

Willem Dafoe stars as visionary Italian director Pier Paolo Pasolini in this drama examining the last day of his life. Having just completed work on his latest film 'Salò, Or the 120 Days of Sodom' (1975), the 53-year-old director lives in Rome while preparing for his next project. But the intellectual film-maker faces opposition from many portions of Italian society including his own family who try to dissuade him from making his next picture due to its overly controversial nature. After he gives what would prove to be his last interview, Pasolini picks up a young street hustler (Damiano Tamilia) and takes him out to dinner shortly before his tragic but mysterious death.