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Koyaanisqatsi
1983
First-time filmmaker Godfrey Reggio's experimental documentary "Koyaanisqatsi" from 1983 - shot mostly in the desert Southwest and New York City on a tiny budget with no script, then attracting the support of Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas and enlisting the indispensable musical contribution of Philip Glass - delighted .. Read more
| Director | Godfrey Reggio |
|---|---|
| Genres | Documentary |
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Koyaanisqatsi
First-time filmmaker Godfrey Reggio's experimental documentary "Koyaanisqatsi" from 1983 - shot mostly in the desert Southwest and New York City on a tiny budget with no script, then attracting the support of Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas and enlisting the indispensable musical contribution of Philip Glass - delighted college students on the midnight circuit and fans of minimalism for many years. Meanwhile, its techniques, merging cinematographer Ron Fricke's time-lapse shots (alternately peripatetic and hyperspeed) with Glass's reiterative music (from the meditative to the orgiastic) - as well as its ecology-minded imagery - crept into the consciousness of popular culture. The influence of 'Koyaanisqatsi', or "life out of balance," has by now become unmistakable in television advertisements and music videos and this DVD provides the uninitiated the chance to see where it all started--along with an intense audiovisual rush.
| Director | Godfrey Reggio |
|---|---|
| Studio | MGM HOME ENT. (EUROPE) LTD. |
| Certificate | |
| Genres | Documentary |
| Language | DVD: English |
| Released | DVD: 13 Jan 2003 Production year: 1983 |
| Format | DVD |
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Critics' reviews (2)
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An offbeat, and often off-beam, documentary-cum-meditation about the decline of western civilisation, using the difference between the untamed American wilderness and hysterical, rush-hour Manhattan as its crux. Director Godfrey Reggio shuns narration in favour of powerful, repetitive music by minimalist composer Philip Glass to match his striking visuals. Made in the early eighties when ecological warnings were starting to take hold, it was, for all its vacuity, a surprising success. The title is a Hopi Indian word meaning “life out of balance”.
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A wildly charitable viewer might describe this as an ecological documentary. Less than 90 minutes transport us from the... read more on Time Out
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Most helpful member's review
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11 out of 12 people found this review helpful
brilliant art movie
the music is great and the video images sometimes overly long will last long after you see this, philip glass soundtrack some of the best theme music ever written really adds to the atmosphere, allthough just a collection of video scenes this is ground breaking movie and deserves to be seen on giant plasma screens, a movie that can change your out-look on life.
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Most recent members' review
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4 out of 4 people found this review helpful
Not To Be Missed
The title of the film apparently originates from a Native American Hopi word meaning, in essence, that the human race is experiencing an increasingly collective life that is “crazy, in turmoil, out of balance, and disintegrating to a point where another way of living is called for”.
Made nearly 25 years ago, in 1983, the film is a simple collection of still and moving images, without narration, accompanied by a mesmerisingly appropriate Philip Glass score. The images, beautifully photographed by Director Godfrey Reggio, contrast the natural beauty of the world against the despoilation of that beauty by man, in the latter’s quest for ‘advancement’. The film depicts those contrasts as stills, real-time, time-lapse and speeded-up images, together with angles that have been imitated on numerous occasions since by other film-makers and in the advertising world.
Regardless of your ecological point of view, the film is an experience not-to-be-missed.
Koyaanisqatsi was the first in a trilogy of films by Reggio, followed by Powaqqatsi in 1988 and Naqoyqatsi in 2005 -
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