Cycladic Screenings

The screening will feature Mamma Roma by Pier Paolo Pasolini — a film hand-picked by Marlene Dumas, as a source of inspiration closely tied to her artistic approach to the figure, emotional intensity, and the human condition.

Marlene Dumas has long shown a strong interest in cinema and its capacity for storytelling and emotional expression. She is particularly drawn to films that explore intense psychological states, the representation of the body, and themes of marginalization. She has cited the influence of Italian neorealism and Pasolini in particular, while cinematic elements—such as dramatic compositions, close framing, and atmospheric tension—are often present in her work.

Μamma Roma, 1964, 106’

One year after his directorial debut with Accattone, Pasolini continues his social chronicle of the marginalized, observing a vibrant prostitute in a noisy (eternal) city and reverently narrating a Christian allegory that elevates a deity: Anna Magnani. In the story of an honest prostitute striving to secure a better future — by petty-bourgeois standards — for her son, Magnani is wholly devoted to the man she bore, rather than those who imposed themselves on her greedily and commercially.

With the camera as a keen witness to daily, tragic grandeur, Pasolini traps Mamma Roma’s “brilliant dream” within the tight cinematic frames and ironically mocks the illusion of longing for escape. Escape is impossible; the shadows of Rome’s neighborhoods foreshadow the dramatic finale, and fate relentlessly and timelessly plays its own game. However, the struggle for a better life must remain the most important motivation, and in the black-and-white world of Mamma Roma, the symbol of that struggle is the face of a “mother courage”. Not coincidentally, Pasolini’s next film was The Gospel According to St. Matthew.

Directed by: Pier Paolo Pasolini
Starring: Anna Magnani, Ettore Garofolo, Franco Citti

The Museum of Cycladic Art is pleased to present the exhibition Marlene Dumas: Cycladic Blues, the artist’s first solo museum exhibition in Greece, running from 5 June through 2 November 2025. Curated by independent curator Douglas Fogle, the exhibition will consist of more than thirty paintings and works on paper by Marlene Dumas, one of the most important artists of our times, displayed along antiquities from the Museum’s permanent collections.

Bringing together newly completed paintings alongside works spanning the past twenty years of her practice, this selection offers a cross section of the artist’s eerily beautiful and challenging representations of the body which she has brought together in direct response to the history of figuration as seen in the antiquities found in the Museum of Cycladic Art’s archaeological collections.

THE EXHIBITION