Le belle bandiere

with a preface by Andrea Bajani

A weekly column written by Pasolini becomes an open, uncompromising, stark and involving dialogue with his readers, and is still one of the most in-depth and fascinating studies of the history of the Sixties.

In June 1960, while making his directorial debut with Accattone, Pier Paolo Pasolini inaugurates a column in the weekly political and cultural publication Vie Nuove, in which he corresponds with his readers. And so begins a true epistolary debate that, albeit with various interruptions, goes on for five years: the people who write to him are manual workers, students, the unemployed and, above all, young adults and adolescents who “use culture not as a qualification but as nourishment”. Pasolini becomes their fellow traveller and confidant, holds conversations that go beyond everyday reports in order to try and interpret the important ongoing historical phenomena, and introduces into the public discussion topics that eventually become crucial in the years to come: the role of women, the new and necessary school policies, the progressive movement making its way in the Church and the dangerous notion of unlimited progress.