2 Pasolini

Pier Paolo Pasolini wanted to shoot his film about Jesus, Il vangelo secondo Matteo (1964), in the Holy Land itself. But during a trip to scout locations, it became clear that this would be impossible: the modern world had become visible in too many places. Andrei Ujica interweaves footage of this visit, in which Pasolini admires the desert landscape with his Vatican adviser Don Andrea Carraro, with excerpts from Il vangelo secondo Matteo.

Ujica juxtaposes shots of an increasingly stormy sea with a quote from the film (which comes from the Gospel of Matthew), in which Jesus warns against the hypocrisy of the lawyers and the Pharisees. The music accompanying the closing credits, 2Pac Shakur's “Hit 'em Up,” adds a surprising layer of meaning to this 11-minute poetic commentary on Pasolini’s film.