So, there was Antiniska, from the original film, who had of course, by 1998, grown 23 years older. Then there were the doubles who looked like the original cast – too like them! – because they were entirely ‘wrong’ for the present; apparently not having aged they seemed to be somehow still trapped in 1975. They were photographed, individually, holding the posters I used to search for them and pointing to their corresponding image within that advertisement. Afterwards, when Antiniska was leaving to get the train back to where she lived in Ferrara, I was thanking her for her participation in my project and was trying to think of questions to ask her about her involvement in the original film. I finally asked her – pretty much as she stepped on the train – how she was ‘murdered’ (realising that she was the only one I hadn’t noticed being executed in the original film). She replied that, at the last minute, she had asked Pasolini if she could avoid this act, for some reason not feeling comfortable about performing the act of being killed. And Pasolini had sensitively respected her wishes.
This seemed amazing!
