ROME: Oscar winner Tilda Swinton brings costumes seen in Italian director Pier Paolo Pasolini's films back to life in a special performance where the focus is on the clothes.

In "Embodying Pasolini", the actor unpacks, displays and tries on the costumes, sometimes with the help of fashion historian and curator Olivier Saillard.

The show - with around 40 costumes designed by Danilo Donati for, among others, the late director's "Oedipus Rex" and "The Decameron" - will be premiered on Friday at Rome's the Pelanda and the Mattatoio exhibition pavilion and streamed online.

"The performance is really the creation of an exhibition and we are curators and it's real, it's not a fake, it's not a fiction. We are creating an exhibition here," Swinton told Reuters on Thursday.

"What those people who watch the performance see is two people figuring out how to embody Pasolini but honestly even Olivier and I, we don't really know what we are doing which I think it's a great place to start."

The costumes, which have been kept at tailoring house Sartoria Farani, include dresses, coats and wooden blocks that were used to make hats seen in the films.

Pasolini, also a poet and writer, was known for his unconventional movies, including "Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom".