ARABIAN NIGHTS

ARABIAN NIGHTS is the final and most expansive film in Pier Paolo Pasolini’s "Trilogy of Life", following THE DECAMERON and THE CANTERBURY TALES. Shortly after completing it, Pasolini publicly disavowed the trilogy, arguing that consumer culture had stripped sexuality of its innocence. It feels like a last celebration made just before Pasolini turned decisively toward darkness.

Based on ONE THOUSAND AND ONE NIGHTS, and released in Italy as IL FIORE DELLE MILLE E UNA NOTTE, the film treats folklore as something alive and unstable. Stories overlap and dissolve. Characters move through desire and chance without moral resolution.

Shot across Yemen, Iran, and Ethiopia using non-professional actors and real locations, the film presents sexuality directly and without punishment. It's exquisitely shot, bawdy in parts, with some of the most impressive costumes and set designs of it's era. Today, it plays like a no-holds-barred farewell to cinema built upon curiosity, pleasure, and myth.