 | | |
| Koyaanisqatsi / Powaqqatsi (2 Pack) | 
 enlarge | Director: Godfrey Reggio
Actors: Ted Koppel, Christie Brinkley, David Brinkley, Pope John Paul Ii, Dan Rather
Studio: MGM (Video & DVD)
Category: DVD
List Price: $24.98
Buy New: $14.48
You Save: $10.50 (42%)
Buy New/Used from $12.50
Avg. Customer Rating:  (119 reviews)
Sales Rank: 3164
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, Dts Surround Sound, Dvd-video, Widescreen, Ntsc
Language: English (Original Language)
Rating: G (General Audience)
Media: DVD
Running Time: 184 minutes
Number Of Items: 2
Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.3
Dimensions (in): 7.4 x 5.2 x 1.2
MPN: D1003913D
ISBN: 079285344X
UPC: 027616880338
EAN: 9780792853442
ASIN: B00003CXAY
Release Date: September 17, 2002
Theatrical Release Date: January 1, 1983
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
|
| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
Studio: Tcfhe/mgm Release Date: 09/21/2004 Run time: 184 minutes
Amazon.com
Koyaanisqatsi
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 (from the meditative to the orgiastic)--as well as its ecology-minded imagery--crept into the consciousness of popular culture. The influence of Koyaanisqatsi, or "life out of balance," has by now become unmistakable in television advertisements, music videos, and, of course, similar movies such as Fricke's own Chronos and Craig McCourry's Apogee. Reggio shot a sequel, Powaqqatsi (1988), and completed the trilogy with Naqoyqatsi (2002). Koyaanisqatsi provides the uninitiated the chance to see where it all started--along with an intense audiovisual rush. Powaqqatsi
Powaqqatsi (1988), or "life in transformation," is the second part of a trilogy of experimental documentaries whose titles derive from Hopi compound nouns. The now legendary Koyaanisqatsi (1983), or "life out of balance," was the first. Naqoyqatsi (2002), or "life in war," was 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. Reggio reuses techniques familiar from the previous film (slow motion, time-lapse, superposition) to dramatize the effects of the so-called First World on the Third: displacement, pollution, alienation. But he spends as much time beautifully depicting what various cultures have lost--cooperative living, a sense of joy in labor, and religious values--as he does confronting viewers with trains, airliners, coal cars, and loneliness. What had been a more or less peaceful, slow-moving, spiritually fulfilling rural existence for these "silent" people (all we hear is music and sound effects) becomes a crowded, suffocating, accelerating industrial urban hell, from Peru to Pakistan. Reggio frames Powaqqatsi with a telling image: the Serra Pelada gold mines, where thousands of men, their clothes and skin imbued with the earth they're moving, carry wet bags up steep slopes in a Sisyphean effort to provide wealth for their employers. While Glass juxtaposes his strangely joyful music, which includes the voices of South American children, a number of these men carry one of their exhausted comrades out of the pit, his head back and arms outstretched--one more sacrifice to Caesar. Nevertheless, Reggio, a former member of the Christian Brothers, seems to maintain hope for renewal. --Robert Burns Neveldine
|
| Customer Reviews: Read 114 more reviews...
 OK December 13, 2008
This series is very interesting and OK but dated(fun to watch the styles). The music is by Phillip Glass. I am NOT a fan of his. His music is very eclectic and stresses me out but my husband loves him and this series. It is all a matter of taste. This DVD pack interesting but just OK.If you really want to be blown away buy Baraka.
 College Composition September 25, 2008
All three "Qatsi" films are a must for any college professor to use in his/her college composition classes. Response to these visual agglomerations will be quite a challenge to all students.
Dr. Serafin Roldan
University of Florida
One of the best creative unions between a visionary director and a brilliant composer ever August 27, 2008
Last week, I watched for the firs time Qatsi trilogy, which includes the films Koyaanisqatsi, Powaqqatsi, and Naqoyqatsi. All of the film titles are taken from the Hopi language; Koyaanisquatsi meaning "life out of balance," Powaqqatsi meaning "life in transformation," and Naqoyqatsi meaning "life as war.
The films were made by Godfrey Reggio and the music score which plays as important role as the images do, was written by Philipp Glass.
The films have no spoken dialogue or plot and have to be experienced viscerally first, and then analyzed because everyone sees different in them. For some viewers - they are glorified long music videos, for the others - the revelation that may change the way we perceive ourselves as human kind and our place on Earth.
As for me, personally, I realized that the collaboration between Reggio and Glass may be one of the best creative unions between a visionary director and a brilliant composer ever.
Of three Qatsi movies, my favorite is certainly, Powaqqatsi, and I know I'll come back to it many times more until my last day because it is not just a gorgeous movie with amazing images; it is one of very precious experiences that happen rarely in life. What made this experience possible is above all and without doubt the MUSIC. It was not the first music by Philip Glass I heard. I like his minimalistic and somehow disturbing scores that go right to your senses for "The Hours", "Notes of the Scandal", and "The Illusionist" (2006). Powaqqatsi was the second movie in Reggio's "Qatsi" trilogy for me. Just before it, I saw "Koyaanisqatsi" (1982) or Life out of Balance", the first of three Reggio-Glass movies. I like "Koyaanisqatsi" very much but I think it is the images that make it so memorable. "Powaqqatsi" for me, is about Glass's magnificent, un-earthy, divine and literally uplifting and transcending score. It is the music that could've been played after God had finished his work of creation and looked down at Earth and saw that it was good. I am a music lover, and I love music of different genres, epochs, and cultures. I enjoy listening to Mozart and Beatles, Nino Rota and Metallica, Zamphir and Scott Joplin, Bob Dylan and Lucianno Pavarotti, Bach and Edith Piaf. I love them all but I don't recall ever being so moved and taken out of this reality, feeling happy and overwhelmed, proud to be able to witness and enjoy the incredible achievement of human creativity and genius as when I was watching and listening to three "Anthems" and "Mosque and Temple" scenes of "Powwaqatsi: Life in Transformation". I don't buy the DVDs very often, I am not a collector but when the movie leaves unforgettable impression, when it brings something amazing into my life, I have to have it. I already ordered and received both, "Koyaanisqatsi" and "Powwaqatsi" on DVDs and I keep rewatching my favorite scenes and the music has the same impact at me making tears of joy coming to my eyes every time I hear the majestic hypnotic triumphant sounds of music written by Phillip Glass.
I would like to add the words of one of my favorite writers. They match perfectly the feelings and emotions the film has evoked in me:
"Mother Earth. She lived, this world of trees and rivers and rocks with deep stone thoughts. She breathed, had feelings, dreamed dreams, gave birth, laughed, and grew contemplative for millennia. This great creature swimming in the sea of space. What a wonder thought the man, for he had never understood that the Earth was his mother, before this. He had never understood, before this that the Earth had a life of its own, at once part of mankind and quite separated from mankind, another with a life of her own."
Harlan Ellison "The Deathbird"
koyannisqatsi - chaotic life April 5, 2008
koyaanisqatsi/powaqqatsi - powerful film portrayal of mankind's development on planet earth. Possible demise of it. Only commercial film w/no audio script. No need for it as the imagery allows viewer to put their own needed meaning and outcome. Showing the evolutionary process of life and technology, warfare, etc. possible self-destruction of life itself if not resources needed to support itself.
Awsome January 20, 2008
Get these movies and Baraka for a new film experience. These will you have you talking about all sorts of topics that you never thought of. I let these movies play in the background of parties and everyone has to ask about them. I am glad I stumbled upon these.
|
|
|
Powered by Associate-O-Matic
| | |