This film is amazing. i can't wait for it to come out on DVD. It easily surpasses the picturesque Powaqqatsi, but it's tough to compare to Koyaanisqatsi, because I grew up with that film. But this film is mindlblowing and memorable. **SPOILER** Except for the last ambiguous and unmemorable 5 minutes, with the astronaut twiring around in space **END OF SPOILER** this film is simply great. Glass outdoes himself with an amazing score with the help of the great Yo Yo Ma. Reggio chooses numerous powerful and realistic everyday images and puts them together with state of the art digital effects. ... Godfrey Reggio - Naqoyqatsi [ read more ]

Powaqqatsi, or "life in transformation," is the second part of a projected trilogy of experimental documentaries whose titles derive from Hopi compound nouns. The now legendary Koyaanisqatsi, or "life out of balance," was the first. Naqoyqatsi, or "life in war," once it obtains funding, will be the third. Powaqqatsi finds director Godfrey Reggio somewhat more directly polemical than before, and his major collaborator, the composer Philip Glass, stretching to embrace world music. ...
Godfrey Reggio - Powaqqatsi - Life in Transformation [ read more ]

First-time filmmaker Godfrey Reggio's experimental documentary 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 ...
Godfrey Reggio - Koyaanisqatsi - Life Out of Balance [ read more ]