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Naqoyqatsi, Godfrey Reggio's third part of the Qatsi
trilogy.
Naqoyqatsi is he final part of the Qatsi trilogy, in which Godfrey
Reggio expresses technology and more modern times.
Different in content to Koyaanisqatsi and Powaqqatsi.
Naqoyqatsi has been made many years after the rest of the films features in this
web site. Due to legal reasons Naqoyqatsi was delayed as the legal rights
over Koyaanisqatsi where resolved. Godfrey Reggio clearly wanted to make
Naqoyqatsi different to Koyaanisqatsi and Powaqqatsi.
Naqoyqatsi doesn't contain beautiful images of North America, empty housing
projects or mines in Brazil that we saw in Koyaanisqatsi and Powaqqatsi.
Naqoyqatsi gives us images of western life today. Constant images of dark
building, armies, wars, molecules and technology. Most shots in
Naqoyqatsi are filtered and the film has a definite feel about it.
It doesn't offer or aim to achieve the same thinking process that Koyaanisqatsi
or Baraka do. I would recommended watching Naqoyqatsi if you are a real
fan of these films.
Write your own review of Naqoyqatsi
Director Godfrey Reggio on the world in which we live
By any measure, we live in an extraordinary and extreme time. Language can no
longer describe the world in which we live. With antique ideas and old
formulas, we continue to describe a world that is no longer present. In this
loss of language, the word gives way to the image as the 'language' of
exchange, in which critical thought disappears to a diabolic regime of
conformity - the hyper-real, the omnipresent image. Language, real place gives
way to numerical code, the real virtual; metaphor to metamorphosis; body to
disembodiment; natural to supernatural; many to one. Mystery disappears,
replaced by the illusion of certainty in technological perfection.
Technology, acceleration do not affect our way of living - they are, in effect,
our new and comprehensive host of life, the environment of living itself. It is
not the effect of technology on the environment, culture, economy, religion,
etc., but rather that all these categories exist in technology. In this sense
technology is new nature. The living environment, old nature, is replaced by a
manufactured milieu, an engineered host - synthetic nature. In a real sense, we
are off planet, dwelling on a lunar surface of stone, cement, asphalt, glass,
steel and plastics, engulfed in the atmosphere of electromagnetic vibrations -
the soothing lullaby of the machine. The common notion tells us that technology
is neutral, that we can use it for either good or bad. From the p.o.v. of
NAQOYQATSI, we do not use technology, we live technology; technology is our way
of life. Being sensate entities, we become our environment - we become what we
see, what we hear, what we eat, what we smell, what we touch. Where doubt is
prohibited, we become, without question, the environment we live in. With our
origins based in the natural order, should this context radically change (as I
am suggesting), the mysterious nature of the human being shall also radically
change - a change that will reflect the transformation of nature itself, at a
turning point or vanishing point. Natural diversity becomes a burnt offering,
sacrificed to the infinite appetite of technological homogenization.
So forget science fiction. We now live the fiction of science. We are now, not
in some remote future, cyborgs. We are at one with our environment - we are
technology. In this wonderland, freedom becomes the pursuit of our
technological happiness. Our standard of living is predicated on commodity
consumption, as the shibboleth of the new religion is 'pray for more'. In
vehicles of ecstasy, with cinematic engines of inertia at audiovisual speed,
trans-port and tele-port blend into one. The beginning becomes the end. The
port disappears in the speed of light. The nanosecond (one billionth of an 'old
second'), technological speed, transforms reality as it creates an ecstatic
phenomena of compelling and unparalleled intensity. By human measure,
charismatic technique portends the miraculous, as it engenders the condition of
'exit velocity' - a condition that blurs human perceptions, shatters all
meanings, drains all content and breaks our bonds to earth. All locations are
subsumed into the startling terra firma of the image, a demonic conformity that
is the genesis of massman. In the shadow of the mass, all previous definitions
crumble. The 'time' and 'space' of history exit to an homogenized zone of no
return. In this supernatural implosion of g-force, human moorings give way,
sending Homo sapiens out-of-orbit into the void of technological space. The
accompanying loss of original habitat and our subsequent relocation into
accelerated space, throws nature into catastrophe, as it engenders traumatic
stress syndrome as the now normal condition of post-human existence. Technique,
while promising comfort and happiness, means power, means control, means
conformity, means destiny. Technology creates a condition of war that is at
once universal and unseen. The explosive tempo of technology is war; the
un-tellable violence of relocation in technology is war. All of us are refugees
driven from our human state.
As the completion of the Qatsi trilogy, NAQOYQATSI offers a cinematic concert to
experience the allurement, seduction and sanctioned terror of ordinary daily
living - a world at war beyond the battlefield, a conflagration between old and
new nature - total war. The vision of NAQOYQATSI is a world made in the image
and likeness of the new divine, the computer - a world where unity is held in
the vice of technological homogenization, the globalized world of
techno-fascism, the age of civilized violence.
It must be noted that the production of NAQOYQATSI employs the very medium that
it questions. In doing so, we embrace the contradiction of using technology to
question technology. Given the intention of the film is to commune, to connect,
we employ the franca lingua of the technological order - what Baudrillard terms
'the evil demon of images'. The image becomes our location. We relocate onto
the image, onto our venerated familiar, the iconic, as we reshuffle the deck to
offer an iconoclastic experience in the form of a film. Indeed, the subject of
NAQOYQATSI is itself the manufactured image, a horizonless digital landscape,
devoid of reality yet full of promise. The tools that produced the film are
themselves our subject.
Images
Press notes
Na-qoy-qatsi: (nah koy' kahtsee) N. From the Hopi Language. <each other-kill
many-life> 1. A life of killing each other. 2. War as a way of life. 3.
(Interpreted) Civilized violence.
A motion picture experience beyond words, NAQOYQATSI merges the power of image
and music to plunge into the heart of the hyper-accelerated, globally wired
21st century. Mesmerizing images plucked from everyday reality, then visually
altered with state-of-the-art digital techniques, stream across the screen in
synch with a hypnotic score by Philip Glass, featuring the passionate cello
work of Yo-Yo Ma. Despite the film's nonverbal nature, the ultimate effect of
its starkly futuristic, computer-enhanced visual fabric is to get people
talking about how technology is altering everything: media, art, entertainment,
sports, politics, medicine, warfare, ethics, nature, culture and the very face
of the human future.
NAQOYQATSI is presented by Academy Award winner Steven Soderbergh, who was drawn
to the film's vision of a brave new globalized world in which the coming
battles include humans versus computers, money versus values and life versus
its simulation. "Godfrey Reggio has created yet another landmark film," says
Soderbergh. "NAQOYQATSI is an explosion of ideas and imagery; a riveting,
rigorous, provocative, and breathtaking exploration of how we've allowed
technology to infiltrate our everyday lives."
Nearly every image in NAQOYQATSI is a special visual effect. Some 80 percent of
the film's footage is culled from stock footage (from such sources as
scientific and military films, newsreels, corporate videos, sports
documentaries, cartoons, television shows and commercials), most of which has
been radically altered with digital technology. Images have been colorized or
de-colorized, stretched, slowed or speeded up, re-patterned, re-textured and
"re-animated," turning the familiar into something startlingly new. By using
the cutting edge in filmmaking technology, NAQOYQATSI provides a dizzying view
of today's world as seen through the lens of the very machinery that has
created it.
NAQOYQATSI is the third and final feature film in "The Qatsi Trilogy" which
began with the groundbreaking "KOYAANISQATSI," a revelatory, kaleidoscopic view
of clashing urban and natural landscapes in North America, and continued with
"POWAQQATSI," a journey around the world unfolding primal traditions and the
influx of new technology. The films have been described as cinematic "head
trips" that take audiences into a realm of pure sensory experience. Together,
they have also become a rare artistic chronicle of the turbulent transition
between the 20th and 21st centuries and its as-yet-unseen consequences.
NAQOYQATSI now leaps ahead to capture the essence of globalization as
barrier-breaking advances in robotics, quantization and digital communications
spread like wildfire across the planet. This final part of the "Qatsi" series
presents one man's vision of what we are hurtling towards in a world where
technology reigns: unprecedented extremes of promise, spectacle, tragedy and
finally, hope.
Like a concert, NAQOYQATSI unfolds in three movements. MOVEMENT ONE explores the
newly wired world and the ongoing evolution from human language to numerical
code. MOVEMENT TWO delves into the realms of sports, competition and gaming,
which have become worldwide addictions. MOVEMENT THREE takes off on a journey
into sheer speed and the breakneck acceleration of 21st century life --
pondering what it is like to remember the future and truly experience the
present.
NAQOYQATSI is written and directed by Godfrey Reggio, with an original score by
Philip Glass featuring cellist Yo-Yo Ma. Jon Kane is the editor and visual
designer. The executive producer is Steven Soderbergh and the producers are
Lawrence Taub and Joe Beirne. The co-producer is Mel Lawrence, and the director
of photography is Russell Lee Fine.
Amazon.com review
Whether your intellect is completely engaged or passively detached, any viewing
of Naqoyqatsi is likely to provoke a fascinating response. You can view
it as a magnificent, visually stimulating music video (as critic Roger Ebert
suggested you should), or in context as the third and most unsettling film in
director Godfrey Reggio's "qatsi" trilogy, each titled from the Hopi language,
and preceded by Koyaanisqatsi and Powaqqatsi ("Life out of
Balance" and "Life in Transformation," respectively). "Life as War" is the
translation of this film's title, and Reggio's theme is not one of conventional
warfare, but of daily life as warfare in the age of rapidly evolving
technology. The entire trilogy views humankind as a blight on the pristine
nature of Earth, but here the theme is taken to its inevitable extreme: a
constant flow of new and archival images--manipulated with solarization,
digital enhancements, thermal effects, 2-D and 3-D animation, etc.--combine to
convey athletic and military regimentation, culminating in the doomsday
flowering of missiles, rockets, and all varieties of nuclear weaponry. The
cumulative effect, when combined with Philip Glass's mesmerizing score (his
best of the trilogy, with cello solos by Yo-Yo Ma) is one of doom-laden
portent, but, as Stephen Holden observed in the New York Times, the film
is also arrestingly beautiful as it weaves its hypnotic, apocalyptic spell. For
those who wish to delve further, Reggio, Glass, and editor/visual designer Jon
Kane provide valuable insight in a bonus panel discussion. --Jeff Shannon
Description
Miramax Home
Entertainment and Oscar(R)-winning filmmaker Steven Soderbergh (Best Director,
TRAFFIC, 2000) present NAQOYQATSI ("Life As War"), from filmmaker Godfrey
Reggio, in collaboration with composer Phillip Glass, whose original score
features renowned cellist Yo-Yo Ma. In this cinematic concert -- the concluding
film of the Qatsi Trilogy preceded by the critically acclaimed KOYAANISQATSI
("Life Out Of Balance"), and POWAQQATSI ("Life In Transformation") --
mesmerizing images reanimated from everyday reality, then visually altered with
state-of-the-art digital techniques, chronicle the shift from a world organized
by the principles of nature to one dominated by technology, the synthetic, and
the virtual. Extremes of intimacy and spectacle, tragedy and hope, fuse in a
tidal wave of visuals and music, giving rise to a unique artistic experience
that reflects Reggio's visions of a brave new globalized world.
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Is everything humans create unnatural, and everything before humans was natural, pure, pre-evil?