“I was moved to bring this drawing here,” cartoonist and musician Davide Toffolo said, unveiling the new image of the Academiuta Pasolini at Palazzo Burovich in Casarsa della Delizia, imagazine.it reported. The image pairs a crow with the line “Masters are made to be eaten,” drawn from Pier Paolo Pasolini’s film “Uccellacci e uccellini,” and marked the opening of the Centro Studi Pier Paolo Pasolini’s high-level training school.
Thirty-one young researchers from Italian and European universities are taking part in the school, which runs Nov. 4–5 at Palazzo Burovich under the theme “Pasolini, polemical journalist.” The program is curated scientifically by Roberto Carnero, an associate professor at the University of Bologna.
Toffolo’s crow and the meaning of “eating the master”
Toffolo, the frontman of the band Tre allegri ragazzi morti, said the line from the film is completed in the movie with “in salsa piccante” — “in spicy sauce” — words attributed to the philologist Giorgio Pasquali. In the film, the crow, which represents the Marxist intellectual, is eaten by the two protagonists.
“You are students today and you know what it means to have a master in front of you,” Toffolo told the participants, according to imagazine.it.
A school built on Pasolini’s journalism
The course traces Pasolini’s journalistic output from his early collaborations to “Dialogues with Pasolini” in “Vie Nuove,” from the “Il caos” column in “Tempo” to his interventions in the “Corriere della Sera,” later collected in “Scritti corsari” and “Lettere luterane.”
“We took up Pasolini’s invitation to identify the threads running through his production, without limiting ourselves to the ‘Scritti corsari,'” Carnero said.
The name Academiuta recalls the small “Academiuta di lenga furlana” that Pasolini founded in his native Friuli region. Marco Salvadori, president of the Centro Studi, said the school aims to be “an occasion for dialogue with young people through Pasolini’s word.” Paola Zia, the municipal councilor, said Pasolini is central to Casarsa because of his bond with the town and what he represents nationally and internationally, which is why the local administration is collaborating with the Centro Studi.
Why Pasolini’s warnings still apply to the internet age
Carnero argued that Pasolini’s analysis of power remains current. In the 1970s, Pasolini saw television as an instrument of power capable of imposing a single way of thinking. Today the medium has changed but the mechanisms of conditioning have not, he said.
“The internet appears more democratic and horizontal, because everyone can express themselves, but it hides more subtle forms of influence,” Carnero said, pointing to the weight of influencers and social media dynamics. “Pasolini’s observations on television can also be applied to these new centers of transmission of thought, especially toward those who have fewer cultural tools to develop a critical eye.”
Carnero said he sees that relevance in his own teaching: “When I present Pasolini to students, it is they who recognize elements of great relevance in his thought.”
Four days between Casarsa and Udine
The week continues Nov. 6 in the Sala Pasolini at Palazzo di Toppo Wassermann in Udine and returns Nov. 7 to Palazzo Burovich in Casarsa for the international conference “Pasolini and the Twentieth Century: An Atlas of Writings and Arts at the End of the Century,” curated by literary critic Massimo Raffaeli, ilpopolopordenone.it reported. Both events fall within a Nov. 4–7, 2026 program run by the Centro Studi.
The two initiatives are part of the Centro Studi’s expanded scientific network, which ilpopolopordenone.it reports has signed more than 20 agreements with Italian and foreign universities in recent months. The conference will examine the web of relationships — friendships, confrontations, influences and distances — that tied Pasolini to the leading figures of 20th-century Italian culture, from literature to cinema.
Related reading
