The Pasolini Collection

Collection of six features from Italian film-maker Pier Paolo Pasolini. 'The Decameron' (1971), the first of Pasolini's 'Trilogy of Life' films, is an adaptation of the novel by Giovanni Bocaccio and features nine stories from the 'Decameron Tales' including those of a Neapolitan thief, a man posing as a deaf mute in a convent, an adulteress, a man on his deathbed, three brothers who kill their sister's boyfriend and two friends trying to find out their fate after death. 'The Canterbury Tales' (1972) is a bawdy and scandalous adaptation of Chaucer's tales and includes elements of eight different Chaucer characters - Merchant, Friar, Cook, Miller, Wife of Bath, Reeve, Pardoner and Summoner - and ends with Pasolini's celebrated vision of hell. 'Arabian Nights' (1974) completes the 'Trilogy of Life' series with a number of tales adapted from 'The Thousand and One Nights'.

The main story follows a young man who falls in love with a slave and goes in search of her after she is abducted. 'Medea' (1969) stars Maria Callas in the title role as the daughter of a king who falls in love with Jason (Giuseppe Gentile) and helps him steal the golden fleece.

She becomes Jason's wife and queen, but when he decides to leave her she wreaks a horrible revenge, murdering her own children.

In 'Theorem' (1968), a mysterious stranger (Terence Stamp) arrives at an Italian household and manages to seduce the entire Milanese family as well as their religious maid Emilia (Laura Betti), thereby stripping away their comfortable bourgeois morals and identities.

When he suddenly departs, his absence causes the occupants of the house to re-evaluate their lives.

Set in 1943, 'Salo' (1975) concerns the exploits of four high-ranking fascist officials - a duke, a bishop, a banker and a judge - who lock themselves away in a palace with a retinue of servants and sixteen kidnapped teenagers, both male and female.

They systematically torture and abuse the teenagers in a series of sadistic tableaux involving coprophilia, necrophilia and murder.