Film Details

Originally included in the four-part anthology film Ro.Go.Pa.G. (with segments directed by ROssellini, GOdard, PAsolini, and Gregoretti), this 35-min. movie is one of Pasolini’s key works. A funny but scabrous attack on institutional Christianity, the film was seized by authorities for “insulting the religion of the state” and Pasolini spent four months in prison for making it. Orson Welles stars in the movie (the title refers to ricotta cheese), playing a pompous film director shooting a biblical epic about the death of Jesus. But he is callously oblivious to the plight of the poor, starving extras who are acting in his Passion play. La Ricotta will be preceded at 5:15pm by What Are the Clouds? (Che cosa sono le nuvole?), Pasolini’s segment from the 1968 omnibus film Capriccio All' Italiana, in which Totò and Ninetto Davoli play puppets who comes to life.