Pier Paulo Pasolini Vols. 1 & 2

Love Meetings (Comizi D'Amore) is a lesser known work in the Pasolini canon. Made in 1964, it finds the director and poet experimenting with cinema verite as he interviews a large spectrum of Italian society about their attitudes towards sex in the modern world. While it is interesting to see Pasolini at work, and his questions are often quite provocative for their day, this would be chiefly of interest to students of European social politics of the time. Pigsty (Porcile) is an altogether different beast. From 1969, in the aftermath of his "breakthrough" films Oedipus Rex and Theorem, it pairs two parallel tales. One strand follows the fortunes of a band of cannibals traversing a medieval wasteland, the other is a broad satire on a German industrialist and his son's fondness for his porcine pals. It's hard to tell how the strands relate to each other and the result is highly enigmatic and, at times, quite beautiful and grisly. [Euan Andrews]