In 1982 this "UFO" film by Godfrey Reggio, produced by Coppola, was released. A visual documentary poem of unprecedented strength on our world and its relationship to modernity and nature. An enchanting work more than ever of current events, brilliantly put into music by the french duo Cercueil (ciné-concert Eraserhead).
Without speaking, KOYAANISQATSI is the first part of the QATSI trilogy, the human symphony of Godrey Reggio. This intense and original work is an incredible experience in the history of documentary cinema.
Considered one of the first films to use the Time-lapse technic, ultra-accelerated effect realized frame by frame over longer durations, the film is made of collages of real shots, computer-generated images, commercials. In a parade of gigantic paintings, Godfrey Reggio and Ron Fricke show us, playing on scales of space and time, our world from a different angle.
Enthusiastic description of the technology, or lively criticism of it ? Everyone is invited to build their own reality. “Koyaanisqatsi is what you want to do with it. It’s its power,” Reggio says.
For him, “the objective is travel, not destination”. His goal is to reveal what he calls “the beauty of the beast” by challenging us, asking us about the fragile balance between nature and the human being.
Since 2000, Koyaanisqatsi has been ranked at the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress in Washington.