For the 50th Anniversary of the Murder of Pier Paolo Pasolini, on Saturday 1 November 2025 MACRO, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Rome, presents A Desperate Vitality. Pasolini 50 years after, a program of encounters, screenings and performances focusing on the Roman intellectual who passed away during the night of 1–2 November 1975.
18:00 | Circostanza Pasolini: Yekatit 12. Non si piange su una città coloniale (Shed no tears for a colonial city). Scenes from a film never made on African memories, past and future, in Rome
Screening and encounter with Giulia Fiocca, Morteza Khaleghi, Lorenzo Romito (Stalker) and Unione delle Comunità Etiopiche APS, coordinated by Museo delle Periferie, in the context of the program Piangiamo Pasolini.
A project by Stalker for the Museo delle Periferie with AMM, Archivio Memorie Migranti, Mad’O, Museo dell’Atto di Ospitalità at Spin Time, Collettivo Razza Partigiana, Federazione delle Resistenze (RIC, RAM Arbegnouc Urbani and Wu Ming 2), Women Crossing. The video documents “Circostanza Pasolini,” a public action project that has addressed social and cultural issues, such as the colonial legacy, along a path of research based on the rediscovery of unpublished materials by Pier Paolo Pasolini, taking its cue from the proximity between the Monument to the Fallen of Dogali at Piazza dei Cinquecento and Bar Gambrinus, where Pasolini met Pelosi and the night of the poet’s murder began. This proximity becomes the starting point for the interweaving of Africa, Italian colonialism and the settlement of migrants in Rome. Pier Paolo Pasolini—one of the few Italian intellectuals to come to terms with the colonial question—connected the world of the working-class suburbs and post-colonial Africa in a unified perspective.
The encounter takes place at the Auditorium.
Entry is free of charge until audience capacity is reached.
19:45 | In un sole irriferibile (In sunlight so heavenly). The encounter with Pasolini in the language and poetics of Enzo Cosimi
Encounter with Enzo Cosimi and Maria Paola Zedda, moderated by Cristiana Perrella.
In A Desperate Vitality, the poem by Pier Paolo Pasolini that lends its name to the performance by Enzo Cosimi, images emerge that have always been part of the choreographer’s language: Rome and its light, the sea, cinema, solitude, a black sun at the twilight of an era. In that coexistence of vehemence and disenchantment, Cosimi sees his reflection as if in a lens tarnished by the passage of history, translating the poet’s vision into a gesture of choreography, performance and installation.
The conference traces back through an artistic pathway of over 20 years, from the first approach to the figure of Pasolini, at the time of the Dissonanze festival, with Real Good Time, then with I Need More and even more explicitly with Bastard Sunday, all the way to a series of installation-performances, specifically Visione Africana and The Respirator, presented at MART in Rovereto, and to the latest production, Una disperata vitalità (Special Dance Project 2025 of the Ministry of Culture).
A spectral sign, somehow always present, that accompanies the choreographer’s career every step of the way, joining with it and creating a duality. The conversation between Enzo Cosimi and Maria Paola Zedda, moderated by Cristiana Perrella, will examine these crossings, from the relationship woven in his works with the artistic legacy of Pasolini, to the phantom-like presence, a subterranean counterpart, that infests his work and cyclically, unexpectedly surfaces like a hidden trail.
The event takes place in the Auditorium.
Entry is free of charge until audience capacity is reached.
21:30 | Una disperata vitalità | performance by Enzo Cosimi, national premiere in collaboration with Compagnia Enzo Cosimi
Project and dramaturgy: Enzo Cosimi
Directing, choreography, video: Enzo Cosimi
Light designer: Giulia Belardi
Lighting engineer: Alessandro Albertazzi
Video shooting: Roberto Gentile
Original music: Robert Lippok
Dancers: Elisabetta Di Terlizzi, Luca Della Corte, Davide Di Pretoro, Giulia Cannas, Nunzia Picciallo, Giulia Pirandello, Luca Pirandello, Matteo Principi, Lucia Sauro
Organization: Pamela Parafioriti
MACRO, in collaboration with Compagnia Enzo Cosimi, presents the national premiere of the new creation by Enzo Cosimi Una disperata vitalità, winner of the call for Special Projects 2025 of the Italian Ministry of Culture. Una disperata vitalità stems from the desire to explore the poetic, political and human universe of the great intellectual from Friuli, reconstructing the echoes of Pasolini’s outlook in contemporary culture through the research conducted by the Roman choreographer for many years on the world of Pier Paolo Pasolini.
The main source of inspiration for the performance is Pasolini’s cinema, in which poetry, realism and prophetic visions intertwine. In this context, the figure of Anna Magnani—the unforgettable protagonist of Mamma Roma—becomes the emblem of a desperate vitality, embodied and universal, which still speaks to us with great force today. Cosimi’s choreography amplifies and dissects the director’s poetic vision through a dramaturgical structure, moving within an abstract, rarefied and suspended landscape.
After the experience of Bastard Sunday, in which a number of themes addressed in the work of the Roman choreographer were already present—such as Eros and Thanatos—in this new project Cosimi widens the horizon and opens to a choral dimension, working with 9 dancers. The passage from the solo to the group permits a multiplication of gazes, transforming perspectives and making the complexity of the research even more vivid. The soundtrack for Una disperata vitalità intertwines echoes of pieces by Johann Sebastian Bach—a composer often heard in Pasolini’s films—with the composition by the Berlin-based musician Robert Lippok, one of the most innovative and experimental figures on the European electronic music scene.
The performance takes place in the exhibition space.
Tickets are available for purchase at MailTicket
Program
18:00 | Circostanza Pasolini Yekatit 12. Non si piange su una città coloniale. Scenes from a film never made on African memories, past and future, in Rome | Screening and encounter with Giulia Fiocca, Morteza Khaleghi, Lorenzo Romito (Stalker) and Unione delle Comunità Etiopiche APS, coordinated by Museo delle Periferie in the context of the program Piangiamo Pasolini.
19:45 | In un sole irriferibile. The encounter with Pasolini in the language and poetics of Enzo Cosimi | Encounter with Enzo Cosimi and Maria Paola Zedda, moderated by Cristiana Perrella.
21:30 | Una disperata vitalità | performance by Enzo Cosimi, national premiere in collaboration with Compagnia Enzo Cosimi.
ENZO COSIMI is one of the most authoritative and innovative choreographers in the field of Italian contemporary dance. With his Company he has created over 60 performances presented in the leading Italian and international theatres and festivals, including Centre Pompidou in Paris, Ars Electronica in Linz, and during tours in Europe, the United States, Asia and Australia. He has collaborated with important artists and personalities, including Miuccia Prada, Luigi Veronesi, Richie Hawtin, Aldo Busi and Fabrizio Plessi; with the latter he created Sciame, the first Italian dance-video work. After his debut in 1982 with Calore—reprised in the RIC.CI. project—he has created iconic works like Tecnicamente dolce, Il pericolo della felicità and Sopra di me il diluvio (Biennale di Venezia 2014, Premio Danza&Danza for Best Italian Production). In 2006 he choreographed the segment From Futurism to the Future for the opening ceremony of the 20th Winter Olympics in Turin, featuring Roberto Bolle. In recent years he has developed two trilogies, Sulle passioni dell’anima and Ode alla bellezza, investigating political and social themes like fear, desire and diversity. Since 2018 he has moved forward with the project Orestea – Trilogia della vendetta, followed by the projects The Play Garden (2023, MiC), Venere vs Adone (2024, Festival Civitanova Danza) and Una disperata vitalità (2025, Progetto Speciale MiC) inspired by Pier Paolo Pasolini. In 2025 Enzo Cosimi has won the Premio Hystrio-Corpo a Corpo, with a focus on the multiple languages of the body.
MARIA PAOLA ZEDDA, curator and expert on performance, dance and visual arts, conducts research on the borderline languages between disciplines, seeing the boundary as a method of analysis and field of investigation. She has worked as an assistant and organizer for over a decade, and presently as a dramaturg in the productions of Compagnia Enzo Cosimi. Since 2011 she has directed festivals and events regarding the languages of contemporary culture (Across Asia Film Festival, CampoSud, NAO Performing Festival), collaborating with institutions such as MAXXI - Museo Nazionale delle Arti del XXI Secolo, Triennale di Milano, Istituto Svizzero, Musei Civici di Cagliari, Hanoi Doclab - Goethe Institut. In 2015 she was the artistic director of Cagliari Capitale Italiana della Cultura. Since 2018, in Milan she has curated the project Le Alleanze dei Corpi, focused on the relationship between the body and public space. In 2019, for Editoria & Spettacolo, she edited the monograph “Enzo Cosimi. Una conversazione quasi angelica,” and she has curated the volume “The Last Lamentation. Valentina Medda” for Kunstverein Milano. She writes for various magazines, including Artribune, Exibart, Alfabeta2, Antinomie, Animot, Nero, Operaviva. She is presently a PhD scholar at IUAV University of Venice.
The initiatives of PPP VISIONARIO – 50th Anniversary of the Murder of Pier Paolo Pasolini are promoted by Roma Capitale – Department of Cultural Affairs, coordinated by the Department of Cultural Activities, in collaboration with Biblioteche di Roma, Fondazione Cinema per Roma, Fondazione Musica per Roma, Azienda Speciale Palaexpo, Teatro dell'Opera di Roma, Fondazione Teatro di Roma – Teatro Nazionale, and TiC – Teatri in Comune. They also involve associations, cultural operators, artists and professionals. With the organizational support of Zètema Progetto Cultura. The full program of the event series, subject to change, is available at www.culture.roma.it