'' is a
Documentary Film directed by
Godfrey Reggio with music composed by
Minimalist composer
Philip Glass and cinematography by
Ron Fricke . The film consists mostly of
Slow Motion and
Time-lapse photography. The documentary contains no narration and relies heavily on music to set the film's tone.
The film is the first in the
Qatsi Trilogy of films, including the films
Powaqqatsi and
Naqoyqatsi . The trilogy depicts different aspects of man and technology. Due to copyright issues, the film was
Out-of-print for over a decade. Glass and his
Philip Glass Ensemble have toured with the film, playing the music live in front of the film screen.
The film has several cinematic sequences. Each of these sequences has a distinct musical feel, although themes from earlier sections of the score recur frequently throughout. The chapters on the ''Koyaanisqatsi'' DVD are separated and named by the titles of the musical sections.
The first image in the film is of a cave painting depicting several tall darkly-shadowed figures standing near a taller figure adorned with a crown. The next image is a
Close-up of the
Saturn 5 rocket from the
Apollo 12 mission during take-off. The film fades into a shot of a desolate desert landscape. From there, it progresses to footage of various natural environmental phenomena such as waves and cloud formations ("Organic").
The films first shot of man's involvement in the environment is a large mining truck giving off billows of black smoke in the chapter titled "Resource". This is followed by shots of
Power Lines set up in the desert. Man's continued involvement in the environment is depicted with mining operations, overhead shots of power plants, the
Hoover Dam and
Stock Footage Atomic Bombs set off in the Nevada desert.
The sequence entitled "Vessels" contains the films longest single take: a three-minute-thirty-two-second long shot of two United Airlines commercial passenger
Boeing 747 s being taxied around the runway. "Vessels" also contains shots of traffic patterns and a shot of a large parking lot. This is followed with stock footage of tanks lined up in rows and military aircraft flying over a desert.
The juxtaposition of man and nature is seen again in the chapter "Cloudscape". The stop-motion photography of shadows of clouds are seen moving across the skyscrapers in
New York City .
The sequence "
Pruitt-Igoe " contains shots of various housing projects in disrepair, and includes footage of the decay and demolition of the Pruitt-Igoe housing project. The housing project was known for its modernist design, but fell into immediate disrepair from misuse by its tenant population. The sequence ends with stock footage of the destruction of large buildings and a shot of a television sets being blown up.
A sequence known as "Slow People" begins with a
Time Lapse shot of a crowd of people who appear to be waiting in a line. This is followed by shots of people walking along city streets shot in with
Slow Motion photography.
"The Grid" is the film's longest sequence, roughly 22 minutes in length. The cimematic theme of this sequence is the speed of modern life. The sequence begins with shots of buildings and a shot of a sunset reflected in the glass of a skyscraper. The sequence is characterized by its use of
Time Lapse photography of the activity of modern life, taking events typically shot at normal speed and speeding them up. The events captured in this sequence involve people interacting with modern technology. The first shots are of traffic patterns as seen from skyscrapers at night. This is followed by the films iconic shot of the moon passing behind a skyscraper. The next shots are a closer shots of cars driving on highway. The sun comes up over the city and we see shots of people hurrying to work. The film shows at regular speed the operation of machines packaging
Oscar Meyer Bologna . People are shown sorting mail, sewing
Jeans , manufacturing televisions and doing other jobs with the use of modern technology. A shot of
Hot Dogs being sent down rows of conveyers is followed by a shot of people moving up
Escalator s into a mall. The frenetic speed and pace of the cuts and background music do not slow as shots of modern leisure are shown. People eat, play, shop and work at the same speed. The sequence begins to come full circle as the manufacturing of automobiles in an
Assembly Line Factory is shown. More shots of highway traffic are shown, this time in daylight. The film shows the movement of cars, shopping carts,
Twinkies and television on an assembly line and elevators moving from first person perspective. The film then shows clips from various televison shows being
Channel Surfed shown in fast motion photography. One portion of this sequence shows a man and two different couples reacting to being filmed on the street in slow motion photography. The man is somewhat indifferent to being filmed, but one woman is appears peeved and one man looks confused about being filmed. The sequence now shows cars moving much faster than the speed they were moving before. Both the sequence and the music end with out any resolution cinematic or
Musical .
"Microchips" juxtaposes pictures of microchips and satellite photography of metropolitian cities. The films makes an obvious comparison between the layout of both and their similarities.
"Prophecies" shows various shots of people in from all walks of modern life, from beggars to debutantes.
"Ending" shows a shot of a stock footage of a modified and unmanned
Atlas Rocket from the
Mercury Program from the early 1960's. The rocket blows up not long after take off. The footage follows the nose cone of the rocket as it plummets back to earth. The film comes full circle with a shot of a different cave painting, similar to the first, but with no darkly shadowed figures. All of the figures are dressed in different outfits.
The composer
Philip Glass has provided the soundtrack for this movie, in addition to the rest of the movie's trilogy.
The music can be described as minimalist as several themes are repeated frequently. The opening music repeats a simple
Synthesizer melody over and over again.
"The Grid"'s opening is characterized by slow sustained notes on brass instruments. The music builds in speed and
Dynamics throughout the piece's 21 minutes. When the piece is at its fastest, it is characterized by an
Synthesizer playing the piece's bass line obligato.
Reggio has said in a short documentary about the film, ''Essence of Life'', that the Qatsi films meant to create an experience and that "it is up for the viewer to take for herself what it is that
film means." However, the film does question whether, in our haste for technological advancement, humankind have progressed out of balance with nature, each other and our own internal free spirits, with Man now reduced to just a raw material in a non-stop machine. Reggio said in ''Essence of Life'' "these films have never been about the effect ''of'' technology, ''of'' industry ''on'' people. It's been that everyone: politics, education, things of the financial structure, the nation state structure, language, the culture, religion, all of that exists within the host of technology. So it's not the effect ''of'' it's that everything exists within [technology]. It's not that we ''use'' technology, we ''live'' technology. Technology has become as ubiquitous as the air we breathe..."
The movie has no dialogue but does feature the
Hopi word ''koyaanisqatsi'', a concept translated as "life of moral corruption and turmoil" or "life out of balance." "Koyaanisqatsi" is chanted at the beginning and end of the film in a dark, sepulchral ''
Basso Profundo '' by singer
Albert De Ruiter over a score by
Philip Glass . Three Hopi prophecies are sung by a choral ensemble over the film's final few minutes and are translated just prior to the end credits:
- "If we dig precious things from the land, we will invite disaster."
- "Near the day of Purification, there will be cobwebs spun back and forth in the sky."
- "A container of ashes might one day be thrown from the sky, which could burn the land and boil the oceans."
The film was made over the course of about six years. Three were spent shooting the film. Glass and Reggio spent the other three years with the former composing score to fit the film and the latter recutting the footage to fit the score.
The movie credits
Jacques Ellul ,
Guy Debord and
Ivan Illich for its basic inspiration at the end of the film.
Out of print for over a decade, ''Koyaanisqatsi'' was rereleased on
DVD in late 2002. Much of the reason for the film's disappearance from the market centered around a complicated rights and royalties dispute. Reggio's Institute for Regional Education owns the original
Copyright on the film. The film had originally been licensed and distributed through
Island Entertainment /
Palm Pictures , which had subsequently been sold to
PolyGram - and after the dissolution of PolyGram Pictures, the entire PolyGram film library had been sold to
Metro-Goldwyn Mayer . As there had been many accounting departments for these several entities involved, calculations and payments of royalties to the film makers had not been made. IRE brought suit and released an independently-financed DVD production of the film to raise money for the legal costs. MGM and IRE reached an agreement allowing for the current mass-market version through MGM.
''Koyaanisqatsi'' is followed by the sequels ''
Powaqqatsi '' and ''
Naqoyqatsi '' and the shorts ''
Anima Mundi '' and ''Evidence.'' ''Naqoyqatsi'' was completed after a lengthy delay caused by funding problems and premiered in the United States on
October 18 ,
2002 .
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In
2000 the United States
Library Of Congress deemed ''Koyaanisqatsi'' "
Culturally Significant " and selected it for preservation in the
National Film Registry . In the late 1990's Koyaanisqatsi was one of the first films broadcast via satellite and internet.
The film's
Cinematographer ,
Ron Fricke also went on to direct ''
Baraka '', a documentary which is often compared to ''Koyaanisqatsi''.
The Philip Glass Ensemble has toured the world, playing the music for ''Koyaanisqatsi'' live in front of the movie screen.
- The fire in the beginning is the base of a Saturn V rocket from the Apollo Program taking off.
- The rocket exploding in the end is a modified and unmanned Atlas Rocket from the Mercury-program from the early 1960's. Both are Stock Footage .
- Footage of the demolition of the Pruitt-Igoe housing complex figures prominently in the film.
- Midway through the film is a quick-motion clip of a car driving down a freeway. This scene depicts portions of the elevated freeway in San Francisco, which included an exit at Embarcadero Center near the Ferry Building that the car carrying the camera takes. Said Elevated Freeway was torn down after structural damage caused by the 1989 Earthquake .
- Roughly an hour and nine minutes into the film, producer Francis Ford Coppola makes a cameo appearance, stepping onto an elevator (from the left side of the frame).
- Francis Ford Coppola did not actually produce the film. He is credited as presenter of the film according the official website. See also interview with Godfrey Reggio in indieWIRE : "...[Coppola] would like to do everything possible to make this available to the public, so he put his name on it".
- The font for the film's title was later used for the hit 1988 anime film " Akira ".
- The figures depicted at the beginning of the movie are ancient Anasazi pictographs known as The Great Gallery, in the Horseshoe Canyon detatchment of Canyonlands National Park in southeastern Utah. The large skylight arch depicted a few scenes later is a formation called Paul Bunyan's Potty in the Needles District of Canyonlands.
- The chanted ''koyaanisqatsi'' lyric was Parodied in the P. D. Q. Bach piece ''Prelude to Einstein on the Fritz'', being replaced with the lyric ''Coy Hotsy-Totsy''.
- The Simpsons parodied Koyaanisqatsi in the episode '' Hello Gutter, Hello Fadder ''. There is a fast-motion sequence when Homer oversleeps, accompanied by music very similar to that in the film.
- In The Simpsons episode '' Million Dollar Abie '' a time-lapse sequence with Koyaanisqatsi-like music is used to show the passage of 24 hours at the Springfield Retirement Castle.
- The fast-motion cinematography of Koyaanisqatsi inspired subsequent films and music video, including the Madonna video to ''Ray of Light'', or more directly the Queen and David Bowie music video to Under Pressure , which used some of the same footage of buildings being destroyed. Also, many many commercials over the years have used shots from the film.
- Part of the musical score is used in the UK TV Advertisement for the environmental organisation The Carbon Trust .
- The computer game musician Rob Hubbard referenced parts of the Koyaanisqatsi score in his music for the Commodore 64 game '' Delta ''.
- In season 6 episode 5 of the WB show Gilmore Girls , entitled "We've Got Magic To Do", the character named Kirk does an interpretive dance to the music of Koyaanisqatsi.
- On the Scrubs episode "My New God", the main theme from Koyaanisqatsi is played when the Janitor character is staring down J.D. They also used the theme in the episode "My Chopped Liver" when four of the characters were giving Carla the " Evil Eye ".
