#641: REGGIO, Godfrey: Powaqqatsi (1988)
THE QATSI TRILOGY {Spine #639}
An interview program with Reggio and composer Glass on their collaboration.
An interview with Reggio about his greatest influences and teachers.
Public television interview
With Reggio from 1989 about the trilogy.
Anima Mundi (1992)
REGGIO, Godfrey (United States)
Powaqqatsi [1988]
Spine #641
Blu-ray
Blu-ray
Five years after Godfrey Reggio stunned audiences with Koyaanisqatsi, he again joined forces with composer Philip Glass and other collaborators for a second chapter. Here, Reggio turns his sights on third-world nations in the Southern Hemisphere. Forgoing the sped-up aesthetic of the first film, Powaqqatsi employs a meditative slow motion in order to reveal the beauty of the traditional ways of life in those parts of the planet, and to show how cultures there are being eroded as their environments are taken over by industry. This is the most intensely spiritual segment of Reggio's philosophical and visually remarkable Qatsi Trilogy.
99 minutes
Color
Color
5.1 Surround
1:85:1 aspect ratio
Criterion Release 2012
Director
Godfrey Reggio was 48 when he directed Powaqqatsi.
Other Reggio films in the Collection:
#640: Koyaanisqatsi (1983)
#642: Noqoyqatsi (2002)
The Film
Other Reggio films in the Collection:
#640: Koyaanisqatsi (1983)
#642: Noqoyqatsi (2002)
The Film
- Brazil — Serra Pelada Gold Mine
- Peru & Bolivia — Andean Highlands
- Africa (Kenya, Mali, Egypt)
- Nepal (Bhaktapur, Kathmandu Valley)
- India (Jaisalmer, Rajasthan)
- China (Hong Kong)
- Western Urban Scenes (France, USA)
The flow of Glass’ music adds enormous depth to the images.
- Brazil — Serra Pelada Gold Mine
- Peru & Bolivia — Andean Highlands
- Africa (Kenya, Mali, Egypt)
- Nepal (Bhaktapur, Kathmandu Valley)
- India (Jaisalmer, Rajasthan)
- China (Hong Kong)
- Western Urban Scenes (France, USA)
The flow of Glass’ music adds enormous depth to the images.
Film Rating (0-60):
The Booklet
Forty-page booklet featuring essays by Scott MacDonald, John Rockwell, and Bill McKibben.
MacDonald:
57
The ExtrasThe Booklet
Forty-page booklet featuring essays by Scott MacDonald, John Rockwell, and Bill McKibben.
MacDonald:
“The subject of Powaqqatsi is the third-world labor that makes modern society possible. The spectacular opening shots focus on hundreds of men working up and down the steep walls of the Serra Pelada gold mine in northern Brazil. While viewers will be appalled at this exhausting labor, the strength and stamina of the men are impressive, even exhilarating; they are beautiful to watch, often reminiscent of classic statuary. The sequence suggests that the men and women in the Southern Hemisphere who do so much of the world’s dirty work are like Sisyphus in their unrelenting toil and like Christ in the sacrifice of their lives for others (at its end, several workers carry an injured or exhausted man up the mine wall in a manner that evokes the Crucifixion and the Pietà). Of course, the kind of labor we are watching has been part of human societies for millennia — it is what raised the pyramids and the Great Wall of China.”
Rockwell:
“Glass has said he things of his music for The Qatsi Trilogy as alternately ‘under the image,’ ‘on top of the image,’ and ‘next to the image.’ He has added that his under/on top of/next to formulation could work for music either in the foreground or background … sometimes Glass would compose the music and Reggio would edit to it; sometimes the two worked more closely together. But rarely does the music attempt, in any literal sense, to echo the images.”
McKibben:
“We’re going to find out if human bodies and human wills can stop the onrush Reggio so brilliantly depicts. The power that surges through these images is so vast, it’s hard to imagine, frankly, that we can stand up to it. But we will try — and maybe, with the kind of creativity and insight on display in these films, we’ll summon up the power of the spirit, and weight it in the balance against these other massive forces.”
Commentary
None.
Impact of Progress
None.
Impact of Progress
An interview program with Reggio and composer Glass on their collaboration.
Reggio:
“We do not know the effects of the cathode ray tube on human maturation, for example, and yet all of us have grown up in the light of that cathode ray tube, which is like a gun aimed right at your body, and we all know that growth occurs through light. We’re cyborged. We’re already cooking in the stew.”
Glass:
“What’s nice about trilogies is that it expands the scope of your operations. It allowed Godfrey and I to let our ideas grows together over a period of twenty-five years.”
Inspiration and Ideas
An interview with Reggio about his greatest influences and teachers.
Public television interview
With Reggio from 1989 about the trilogy.
Anima Mundi (1992)
Reggio’s twenty-eight-minute montage of footage of over seventy animal species, scored by Glass.
Fantastic, captivating narrator-less documentary.
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