Articles

Pier Paolo Pasolini (Bologna, 1922–Rome,1975) was a poet, novelist, philosopher, thinker and director. He stayed in Friuli several times, as his mother Susanna was born in Casarsa. He attended grammar school in Sacile in 1928, and lived in a house near the Cathedral until 1932. He lived several years as a young man between Casarsa and Versuta from 1943 to 1950, when he worked as a teacher in Valvasone and took an active part to the local political life with the Italian Communist Party. This long period was very fertile for his literary career, as he wrote “Poems in Casarsa” and “The Turks in Friul” in Friulian language. 

After he was introduced to the lagoon by his friend, painter Giuseppe Zigaina, Pier Paolo Pasolini often visited it and chose as his buen retiro a hut on the islet of Safon near Porto Buso, which takes its name from a siphon or natural cavity on the islet from which freshwater was drawn by the fishermen. Between Grado and its lagoon, Pasolini shot some scenes of his film “Medea”, starring the opera singer Maria Callas, with whom he nurtured a deep and affectionate relationship.