cdgr0820's video: Godfrey Reggio: Interview from the Koyaanisqatsi DVD 2002

Koyaanisqatsi: The makers of the film discuss how it was made Interviews with Godfrey Reggio (director, writer) and Philip Glass (music), with discussion of Ron Fricke’s cinematography From the 2002 DVD release: Godfrey Reggio (director), Koyaanisqatsi: Life Out of Balance (MGM Video and DVD, 2002, original film release: 1982). Interview: 25 minutes. Feature film: 86 minutes About the film: The film consists primarily of slow motion and time-lapse footage of cities and many natural landscapes across the United States. The film was well-received upon its release in 1982 and became renown in the decades since. In 2000, Koyaanisqatsi was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.” The film contains neither dialogue nor narration. It’s impact is delivered through a combination of images and music, created through what the director called a trialectic between the director, cinematographer and music composer, as well as through a collaborative process involving many others who worked on the film at an unhurried pace over six years. In the Hopi language, the word koyaanisqatsi means “unbalanced life.” The film is the first in the Qatsi trilogy of films which include Powaqqatsi (1988) and Naqoyqatsi (2002). The director explains his purpose in the interview that follows: “What I tried to show is that the main event today is not seen by those of us that live in it: …the transiting from all-nature, or the natural environment as our host of life for human habitation, into a technological milieu, into mass technology as the environment of life…We live technology. Technology has become as ubiquitous as the air we breathe, so we are no longer conscious of its presence.”