Surely, we still live in a life out of balance. But something about how digital much of human life and industry is now makes it seemingly difficult to create a modern successor to Koyaanisqatsi. I suppose you could just have a panning shot across massive server farms and maybe some footage evoking the sheer amount of carbon and water requires for these operations, but not sure it translates to film in the same powerful way as other footage in films like Koyaanisqatsi, Baraka, and the most recent film along these lines that I have seen, Anthropocene (2018).
40 Years of Koyaanisqatsi
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Re: 40 Years of Koyaanisqatsi
#92Some people think of the qatsi trilogy, Baraka, Samsara, Chronos, Visitors, etc. as documentaries without words, or just pretty pictures and music.
I think of them as audiovisual essays. They're not just a delight for the senses. Each of these films says things. They cut unexpected subjects together in comparisons that speak about the human condition. They use music queues to force new interpretations of familiar settings. The qatsi trilogy uses those hopi sayings to set your mind on rails and then the visuals and music propel you on a roller coaster of emotion, but Fricke's films dispense with the rails and simply let you draw your own meaning. That meaning changes a little every time you watch the films.
These are films that invite you to create your own interpretation. You are invited to watch them with an active mind, always looking for new details, correlations, and how they fit together. This is totally unlike a documentary whose narrator tells you what to think. Here you are not being taught, but invited to teach yourself.
Give these films a chance if you've never watched them. They are uniquely rewarding.
Re: 40 Years of Koyaanisqatsi
#93Re: 40 Years of Koyaanisqatsi
#94Koyaanisqatsi is just one of those Magic films that you can start watching and think yeah whatever - and then as it goes on and on you just get more and more blown away by incredible intensity of the soundtrack and visuals. A really transcendental experience. The backstory that Philip Glass originally didn’t want to score it is also amazing, as is the reason for Francis Ford Coppola’s name being on the artwork even t…
Any good sources on the Philip Glass backstory?
Re: 40 Years of Koyaanisqatsi
#95If you like this then I can’t recommend Baraka highly enough, by the cinematographer of Koyaanisqatsi: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baraka_(film) No narration at all, just amazing visuals and music/sounds. Review by Ebert: https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-baraka-1992
Ron Fricke is person who made Koyaanisqatsi the beautiful visual journey that it is. I would recommend watching any of his other works. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Fricke (FWIW, Powaqqatsi is also pretty good, but I would strongly suggest avoiding Naqoyqatsi which is just not very good).
I'd say Naqoyqatsi has all the qualities of the first two movies, except in the area of visuals. The score is phenomenal, up there with Glass' best.
Re: 40 Years of Koyaanisqatsi
#96Re: 40 Years of Koyaanisqatsi
#97Re: 40 Years of Koyaanisqatsi
#98Funny story, we wanted to watch it recently and found it streaming online somewhere. Unbeknownst to us, it was in reverse, presumably to avoid copyright infringement/getting caught. But there was no mention of it in the description so we had no idea and watched it beginning to end, or rather, end to beginning. After a while I was wondering why nothing I'd read about it mentioned the very interesting artistic choice to play all the footage backwards. The famous music was also istaqsinaayok but I thought maybe after a little while it would switch. It didn't but by then it seemed perverse not to continue. It's really quite poignant in reverse, i recommend it!
Re: 40 Years of Koyaanisqatsi
#99Surely, we still live in a life out of balance. But something about how digital much of human life and industry is now makes it seemingly difficult to create a modern successor to Koyaanisqatsi. I suppose you could just have a panning shot across massive server farms and maybe some footage evoking the sheer amount of carbon and water requires for these operations, but not sure it translates to film in the same powerf…
Hundreds of people in public spaces all sliding their fingers on algorithmically controlled touch screens (and oblivious of each other) would make another shot. A scene of a roomful of people all wearing VR goggles while some "coordinator" walks around would be the climactic transition scene.
What is incredible is that in the four decades since Koyaanisqatsi the imbalance has only gotten worse and there is no evidence that some equilibrium will ever be reached.
Re: 40 Years of Koyaanisqatsi
#100The article is a moving tribute to the power of Reggio's vision and the brilliance of Glass' score. I was living in Santa Fe in the '70s and was at that first screening, it was the world premier, at the Lensic Theater. I still have the stub. I was there because Godfrey Reggio came into the sandwich shop I was a partner in and because I was friends of friends of some of the guys on the camera crews shooting footage in…
Well said.
The movie is powerful enough and the subject relevant enough to still resonate with the younger generation. I do wonder, however, if the older the movie gets, the more distant the imagery from the seventies might intuitively appear to a young viewer. This led me to think about how the movie would look if (re)made today. I keep getting ideas for recent footage / subjects which would work in place of the original shots, whatever the merit of such an undertaking might be.