Pasolini's ARABIAN NIGHTS

Arabian Nights (1974, 130 mins), *Mature audiences only, please.

“The truth is not revealed in one dream, but in many…” The final and most visually spectacular of Pasolini’s "Trilogy of Life", this ambitious, globetrotting production breathtakingly showcases the landscapes of Ethiopia, Eritrea, Nepal, and Yemen, to spin stories told by Scherazade in 1001 Nights in the spirit of their original telling. A multiplicity of interlocking tales of sexual desire, gender masquerade, vaulting ambition and cruel punishment, but in place of theology, there’s magic (including a homage to The Thief of Bagdad!) Stories of princes and demons, hidden treasures, love lessons, illicit pleasures and mysterious deaths are framed by the saga of a runaway slave girl Zumurrud (Ines Pellegrini) who, mistaken as the first man to emerge from the desert, is hailed and adorned as “king” of the great walled city –while her distraught young lover Nur Er Din (Franco Merli…