Details by Film
Koyaanisqatsi
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Powaqqatsi
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Naqoyqatsi
Streaming Options
Koyaanisqatsi
An unconventional work in every way, Godfrey Reggio’s Koyaanisqatsi was nevertheless a sensation when it was released in 1983. This first work of The Qatsi Trilogy wordlessly surveys the rapidly changing environments of the Northern Hemisphere, in an astonishing collage created by the director, cinematographer Ron Fricke, and composer Philip Glass. It shuttles viewers from one jaw-dropping vision to the next, moving from images of untouched nature to others depicting human beings’ increasing dependence on technology Koyaanisqatsi’s heterodox methods (including hypnotic time-lapse photography) make it a look at our world from a truly unique angle.
Powaqqatsi
Five years after Godfrey Reggio stunned audiences with Koyaanisqatsi, he again joined forces with composer Philip Glass and other collaborators for a second chapter. Here, Reggio turns his sights on third-world nations in the Southern Hemisphere. Forgoing the sped-up aesthetic of the first film, Powaqqatsi employs a meditative slow motion in order to reveal the beauty of the traditional ways of life in those parts of the planet, and to show how cultures there are being eroded as their environments are taken over by industry. This is the most intensely spiritual segment of Reggio’s philosophical and visually remarkable Qatsi Trilogy.
Naqoyqatsi
Godfrey Reggio takes on the digital revolution in the final chapter of his Qatsi Trilogy. Through a variety of cinematic techniques, including slow motion, time-lapse, computer- generated imagery, and found footage, the film tells of a world that has completed the transition from the natural to the artificial. Globalization has been accomplished, all of our interactions are technologically mediated, and all images are manipulated. From this (virtual) reality, Reggio sculpts a frenetic yet ruminative portrait of an era in which the cacophony of “communication” has rendered humankind effectively postlanguage.
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Supplements
- Essence of Life, an interview program with Godfrey Reggio and composer Philip Glass on Koyaanisqatsi
- Impact of Progress, an interview program with Godfrey Reggio and composer Philip Glass on their collaboration
- New video afterword by Godfrey Reggio on the trilogy
- New interview with cinematographer Ron Fricke
- Inspiration and Ideas, a new interview with Godfrey Reggio about his greatest influences and teachers
- The Making of “Naqoyqatsi,” a brief documentary featuring interviews with the production crew
- Television spots and a new interview with Godfrey Reggio relating to his 1970s multimedia privacy campaign in New Mexico
- Public television interview with Godfrey Reggio from 1989 about the trilogy
- Panel discussion on the film from 2003, with Godfrey Reggio, composer Philip Glass, editor Jon Kane, and music critic John Rockwell
- Early demo version of Koyaanisqatsi with a partial scratch soundtrack featuring poet Allen Ginsberg, along with a new introduction by Godfrey Reggio
- Anima Mundi (1992), Reggio’s twenty-eight-minute montage of footage of over seventy animal species, scored by Glass
- Interview with Philip Glass and cellist Yo-Yo Ma
- New interview with Godfrey Reggio about the film’s original visual concept, with behind-the-scenes footage
- Trailer
- Trailer
- Trailer
- A booklet featuring new essays by film scholar Scott MacDonald, John Rockwell, and author and environmentalist Bill McKibben