Love Meetings

For Love Meetings, Pasolini traveled throughout Italy, from the factories to the beaches, and interviewed passersby about their attitudes toward sex. A charismatic interlocutor, he questions them, mic in hand, on a wide range of topics: the importance of sex in everyday life, prostitution, homosexuality, the legalization of divorce. And while discussing the customs of the country and its changing mores, invariably his subjects begin to broach other topics as well, like the way ideas about sex are informed by nationalism or religion or gender relations. Though a lesser-known entry in Pasolini’s filmography, Love Meetings is endlessly compelling, both as a social artifact and a work of art. “Every man is made differently,” the poet Giuseppe Ungaretti remarks, referring both to their physical constitution and their spiritual disposition. “Therefore all men are, in their own way, abnormal. All men are, in a way, in contrast with nature.” Print courtesy of Istituto Luce Cinecittà.