Koyaanisqatsi is a film carried out by Godfrey Reggio in 1983, music of Philip Glass, images of Ron Fricke, produced by Francis Ford Coppola.

Synopsis

The film does not tell history, not more than it does not constitute documentary strictly speaking. He proposes simply images where one exploits the scales of space and time to show to the spectator the world where he lives under a different angle, and to invite it itself to conclude in the sense that he will judge good. One can regard this film per moments as an enthusiastic description of technology, sometimes on the contrary like a sharp criticism of this one. Does the realizer admit to have wanted to show what it names the beauty of the animal (allusion undoubtedly (? ) with that of the Apocalypse)

A thing is not a doubt with the sight of film: the technology which, there is little (time of the Hopis, for example) was only utility, is now omnipresent and develops according to its own logic. An impressive image of a city seen of the sky on various scales ends in the photography of the circuits of a Microprocesseur; the image is clear: the human population has about as much freedom when it is taken as a whole that the electrons to do what they want in a microprocessor. Even if the individual remains free, its unit, it, are not it completely any more and is not programmed to be it. The frenzy of the urban activity (in the very esthetic sequence The grid , turned to accelerated) alternate with a striking image of trouble and interior vacuum of the individuals when they are not any more producing (sequences passed to the idle).

Hopis prophecies

The film is based on 3 prophecies Hopis announced and clarified in the band announces of end of film. These prophecies make it possible to better apprehend film, because it is built above. Here in the original language (of film), English:

1. Yew we dig precious things from the Land, we will invites disaster.
2. Near the Day off Purification, there will Be cobwebs spun back and forth in the sky.
3. has container off ashes might one day Be thrown from the sky which could burn the Land and boil the oceans.

and their French translation:

1. If one extracts from the invaluable things of the ground, one will invite to the disaster.
2. Close to the Day of Purification, there will be cobwebs woven from one end to another of the sky.
3. a container of ashes could one being day launched of the sky and it could make flame the ground and boil the oceans.

These prophecies lead to surprising reflections, because neither Hopis - nor nobody - could reasonably envisage the real evolution of the world at the end of the 20th century and at the beginning of XXIe. However:

• prophecy n°1 clearly evokes the whole of the ecological problems which we currently know, in a little controlled exploitation, resources of the ground.

• One would be tempted to include/understand prophecy n°2 like the advent of the company in network, and of course of Internet. But it should be also known that Hopis venerate the spiders, because they represent the bond between what is underground and air, i.e. connection between the 3 old worlds and the current one. The image of prophecy is thus probably much more spiritual than socio-technological.

• prophecy n°3 could evoke the dangers of the nuclear engineering and its terrifying produced, the atomic bomb. But there still it is advisable to read Hopi mythology. This one described indeed that the Creator would have destroyed the first world in fire, and the second in the ice, to punish the men become bad. The 3rd prophecy would then prevent more divine punishment, rather than of a technological threat… but both are not incompatible. (the German article Hopi Legende provides invaluable information on Hopi mythology.)

Significance of the title

See the explanations in the article dedicated to the Trilogy of Qatsi.

Distribution

Data sheet

Context: The trilogy of the Qatsi

This film is the first of the Trilogie of Qatsi, whose realization was spread out over three decades, and who comprises following films:

• Koyaanisqatsi

• Powaqqatsi
• Naqoyqatsi

See the article corresponding

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