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Qatsi Trilogy to be Completed
Karl_Hungus writes "Koyaanisqatsi and Powaqqatsi, the first two installments of Reggio and Glass' trilogy are to be joined by Naqoyqatsi, due out next month. Naqoy.com has some stills, and some fascinating Flash. A brief discussion of the technical side includes the figure of 3.5 terabytes of images collected in the making of the film."
I'd like to buy a vowel...
StrategyTalk.com, PC Game Forums
Is anyone else very confused?
That being said, it's not traditional geek material, but it's fascinating and wonderful
I made a post, no matter how sophmoric on my SITE about this film. The originals in the trilogy are absolutely stunning and breathtaking. With the inclusion of digital technology and even simple "conventional" improvments in film technology, this part definately shapes up to be the best.
:).
If you haven't seen these movies before go see them at your rep theatre. Simply the most brilliant use of image and film I've ever seen. Esp, Koyaanisqatsi.
Umm, and apparently they are really good if you smoke green stuff. Not that I'd know anything about that
Btw, Incase you haven't heard Philip Glass is preforming in a town near you. Doing either live accompaniment to the Trilogy or new work to shorts by Godfrey Reggio (the director) and Atom Egoyan.
Go see it.
I don't know how many of you have actually seen any of these films, but in my opinion, the first film Koyaanisqatsi is one of the finest films ever made. It has no plot, no dialogue, simply 90 minutes of footage set to a brilliant score by Philip Glass. They finally released the first two films in the series on DVD September th 29th, and you'd better believe I had them preordered weeks in advance. I highly reccomend that anyone who has not already seen them do so, but be sure you have time to devote to REALLY watching them, trust me, it is worth it.
Knock knock.
Who's there?
Knock knock.
Who's there?
Knock knock.
Who's there, dammit?
Knock knock.
Who the hell is it?
Philip Glass.
In my opinion, everyone should watch this movie once a year. It really puts things in perspective. And besides that, the visual and audio artistry are incredible, although Philip Glass isn't everyone's cup of tea.
Koyaanisqatsi is partly about the modern lifestyle, but in the more general sense, it is about humanity itself. It takes the us out of our routine life, up into a wider viewpoint, where individuality loses its meaning and we can see our lives as closer to what they are. Individual movements blend grossly to show the patterns of life. We are not unique. We follow the same routine. We swarm.
There are great visual ironies to the film. After showing clips of people rushing around like mad, it shows a person playing Robotron like mad. After showing a bird's eye view of a city, it shows a circuit board.
Some say that this movie is an environmentalist, or leftist in some way. I think the movie trancends political viewpoints. Watch it once a year to get back your sense of scale. We are statistics.
From just this sentence, it sounds a lot like Baraka (1992), another 'movie'/feature/whatever, that was basically just a bunch of beautiful and mesmerising pieces of footage placed together. No real story, just footage of beautiful places around the world. I would recommend renting the Baraka DVD if you're ever bored one night.
Baraka also had a wonderful score/sound production. I'd be sure that the Qatsi Trilogy will too.
In 1500, Europe was a shithole. It would still be a shithole today if Europeans didn't colonize the rest of the world, steal the resources, and bring the resources back to Europe.
And they used these stolen resources to get a lot of people hooked on all kinds of luxuries and a higher standard of living. They used the stolen resources and slavery to create a middle class where before there was only a small high class and the rest of the population were extremely poor.
Lots of poor people are not consumers. A small number of very rich people are not consumers either. Only the middle class make effective consumers and made it possible to bootstrap an industrial revolution.
Without the fruits of this industrial revolution the countries robbed by colonization could not have fed their exponentially growing populations so in a way they are getting some compensation for the cruelty and injustice inflicted upon them by colonization.
Stop worrying about the risks of nuclear power and start worrying about the risks of not using nuclear power.
I submitted this story about a month ago and of course it got rejected. Now it gets accepted and it lacks all of the *good* information, such as the fact that a Quicktime trailer has been out for over a month now for Naqoyqatsi.
:) If you buy the Baraka DVD, try to find the original DVD edition (not the special collector's edition), I've heard lots of complaints that the film->DVD transfer is better in the original DVD.
The first two (Koyanisqatsi and Powaqatsi) have just been mass released on DVD, in advance of the upcoming theater release of Naqoyqatsi (these words are roughly taken from the Hopi language).
Godfrey Reggio is an interesting chap -- he grew up in a monastery and when he left, he turned to film. Probably the best thing he ever did was to find Ron Fricke, who is the directory of photography for all 3 qatsi movies. Ron Fricke put out his own film, Baraka -- the quality of the photography in Baraka is WAY better than in the qatsi movies (because it was filmed 70mm camera rigs of Fricke's own design instead of the 35mm that was available for the qatsi movies), and Baraka takes a less moralizing approach to the imagery. Not to mention Baraka's music is better -- Philip Glass is OK, but the qatsi movies aren't his best work.
And to the slashdot editors -- I know this might get modded down as offtopic, but do a better job. Why not look back through your old rejected stories when you're about to post a "new" (shitty) one?
"one-sided propaganda"? What, as opposed to "fair and balanced propaganda"? [chuckle]
He has a point of view, and he expresses it. This isn't journalism, where balance is a virtue. It's art, where depth of feeling is a virtue. They are very moving works; it's unlikely a viewer will walk away indifferent to the experience. Angry perhaps, but not indifferent.
If you don't like his message about the dangers of technology, perhaps you should see a movie where technology is heroic? How about The Matrix? Oh... wait, no, that's not going to work. Terminator? No, that's no better... Dr. Strangelove? Missed again. Logan's Run? Tron? Gattaca? Minority Report? 2001? Blade Runner? Akira?
Perhaps Mr. Reggio isn't alone in his view?
With reasonable men I will reason; with humane men I will plead; but to tyrants I will give no quarter. -- William Lloyd
The interesting thing about Koyaanisqatsi, though, is that it doesn't really preach anything, as it doesn't have any words. Well, there's a little bit at the end, I suppose, but the point is that you're shown a bunch of images from which you can draw your own conclusions.
Certainly those images that are chosen are there to make you think about particular things, but it's not like Reggio's got Tom Cruise up on the screen yelling "won't someone please, please think about the environment!?!"
Also, while it may be propaganda, I would argue that no one had really showed things from that perspective before Koyaanisqatsi, or at least, they hadn't done so nearly as effectively. And while it may be one-sided against consumerism and technology (which is a debatable point), it's only an 87 minute movie. I'm sure I probably see 87 minutes of Dell commercials in any given month. I don't see them giving equal time to folks like Reggio.
Personally, I think Koyaanisqatsi is more than just propaganda on one side of some issue, for the simple reason that if you asked a dozen people what Koyaanisqatsi is about, they'd all give you different answers. When I watch it, there are certain technological aspects that I find quite beautiful and natural (the shots of clouds reflecting off glass-and-steel buildings, the speeded-up shots of city traffic at night that look a lot like a circulatory system).
It makes you think, is all, and shows you the world in a way you probably haven't seen it before. The reaction you have to those images probably tells you more about yourself than it does about the movie.
Monkeytreats
Yes, you are responsible for this information. Yes, you'll be better off for having seen them. Take an evening, or a weekend day. Don't shoehorn it into a hectic schedule. Actual reflection is always better than drug induced reflection.
I spent a year in Iraq looking for WMD and all I found was this lousy sig.
i'm going to be seeing koyaanisqatsi oct 13 in san francisco with the philip glass ensemble orchestra playing the score of the film live. apparently they're doing a tour, coming to about a dozen cities in america in october in conjunction with the release of the 3rd of the trilogy. tour dates/locations can be found here:
http://www.koyaanisqatsi.org/events/events.php
there's other info on koyaanisqatsi.org, as well.
Long ago, when studying film scoring as part of my degree towards music, our final project for the course was to write music for a portion of Koyaanisqatsi.
I had to write music for the very end, when the rocket goes into the air, and explodes, falling, before an image of a native American work of art fades into view (then the credits).
Thinking about the film's point, I thought I'd write some of the most contrived music I could imagine for the rocket scene. To that end, I serialized the '90210' zip code (in not-so-fond memory of the soap-opera bearing that name) into musical notes, using that sequence to guide everything, from the rhythms, harmonies, and melodies of the poor score. It had precisely the effect I wanted. A work of music utterly devoid of soul.
It's amusing to me, now, to learn that Philip Glass rejected serialism when he was only 19 years old. I knew what I was doing to the movie was dirty, but I had no idea of the full depths I had sunk.
And so it goes.
Not quite true.
The merchantile systems systems setup by the Imperial powers gave them cheap sources of raw materials (raw materials that were not available to other Empires) and a captive market for manufactured goods.
The French and Indian War, which was the impeteus for the taxation that led to the American Revolution, was actually a part of the larger 30 Years War between England and France. When colonial militia was defeated repeatedly by the French and Iroquois forces, British regular infantry established garrisions in New York and New England to protect the colonies -- which was quite expensive.
The British Empire became richer because it focused it attentions on British India, which was a veritable gold mine of spices and material, as well as a massive captive market.
By the time the 20th Century rolled around, the economies of scale achieved by the industrial revolution made the European and US markets so powerful that captive colonial markets quickly became impovrished backwaters.
The British Empire was the largest and smartest. Spain mined so much gold, they created a hyper-inflation which eventually bankrupted most of the nobility.
So while it's not far to say that Europe was built entirely on the backs of it's colonies, it would have been impossible for European powers to raise enough capital to do everything they did without sucking down colonial resources.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK