Donatello Dubini is a filmmaker who lives in Köln; Night and Day a portrait of Donatello, is the recollection of a night spent together with Hermè.

"The last time I had seen Donatello, was when I assisted him with English subtitles for their film of the atom spy Claus Fuchs. Is he still single? Donatello vaguely mentions a girl whose theatre designs he couldn't get along with. I stare into his face. His classic features call to mind the portrait of a young Roman aristocrat I once saw in a book, an example of funerary art that had been painted onto the lid of a sarcophagus. Donatello is seductively handsome but unassuming and too polite; the dark shadow of hair on his face deceptively gives him the air of a dissolute. When I press him he says that he has never felt drawn to homosexuality and mentions Greenaway again. I say, what about Pasolini, and when he says '1001 Nights', I hear '120 Days'. I say that he has the Pasolini look. Donatello confesses that he once acted the part of Pasolini's last lover and executioner in a student film that was never completed."

Extract from Night and Day
Tanya Ury