Koyaanisqatsi

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Koyaanisqatsi - Life Out of Balance

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Customer Review

Aspect Ratio Correct (with some background info)
The issue with the aspect ratio of the MGM DVDs of KOYAANISQATSI and POWAQQATSI has come up here and on the Amazon website, among other places. As a producer and technical advisor on the third Qatsi film, while I was not directly involved in the process of manufacturing these DVDs, I was well aware of the decision-making behind that process. I can say definitively that the 1:1.85 aspect ratio (letter-boxed) on the MGM DVDs accurately reflects the author's intentions and reproduces the original theatrical aspect ratio of the projected films.KOYAANISQATSI and POWAQQATSI were both principally photographed in the 1980s, when widescreen television was a vague idea somewhere off in the future and a large picture tube was 27" across. While conceived as theatrical features, both films were shot with consideration of possible television broadcast, which at that time was almost exclusively full-frame 1:1.33 (4x3). The alternative to "protecting" for 4x3 by composing the image to work well...
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September 29, 2002 (New York, NY United States) | Helpful Votes: 260 | Rating: 5

No Film Comes Close
Everyone obviously has taste and opinion, but simply put, this is my favorite movie of all time (altho, as at least one other reviewer mentioned, not as powerful as the big screen). There is no film like it, except perhaps the Imax film Chronos (which is basically the eye candy with no substance) and possibly the sequel. But those are only similarities in style of filmmaking, not in quality.But I will say, while it's my favorite movie, I can only stand to watch it about every 5 years, because for about 3-4 days after watching Koyaanisqatsi, I can barely deal with this society. It just makes me want to cry to drive on city streets.So if you're already trying to come to grips with reality, this movie probably would be counter-productive. But for everybody who thinks everything about modern western civilization truly is "progress", I couldn't recommend this film enough.What it will be for those people, is a priceless perspective adjustment. It...
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September 29, 2004 (Longmont, CO United States) | Helpful Votes: 50 | Rating: 5

Product Description

A photographic look at modern life in the United States, rich in spellbinding images, both natural and man-made, with several instances of time-lapse photography. Music by Philip Glass. 1983/color/87 min/NR. Top to learn more

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, in similar movies such as Fricke's own Chronos and Craig McCourry's Apogee. Reggio shot a sequel, Powaqqatsi (1988), and is planning to complete the trilogy with Naqoyqatsi. Koyaanisqatsi provides the uninitiated the chance to see where it all started--along with an intense audiovisual rush. --Robert Burns Neveldine Top to learn more

KOYAANISQATSI (Complete Original Soundtrack Version)

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Customer Review

Masterpiece finally restored to its full glory
I saw the 1983 movie "Koyaanisqatsi" when it came out, I was a graduate student in Washington, DC at the time, and it made an enormous impact on me then, both for its visual impact, and of course because of the music. It was in a sense a coming out-party for Philip Glass, who gained mainstream success with the score. I bought the soundtrack when it came out, in its 46 min. abbreviated version. Philip Glass re-recorded the music at some point, but now, finally, after 26 years, comes the fully restored original motion soundtrack."Koyaanisquatsi" (13 tracks; 77 min.) is an unbelievably beautiful musical journey, starting with the title track (who can ever forget the low-booming voice proclaiming Koyaanisquatsi, or Life in Turmoil). Great tracks follow one after another, such as the majestic "Clouds", the great choir leading off "Vessels", eventually leading to the major piece, the 18+ min. "The Grids" which just blows you away. In all, hearing the original soundtrack in its...
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June 2, 2009 (Cincinnati) | Helpful Votes: 19 | Rating: 5

Product Description

All products are BRAND NEW and factory sealed. Fast shipping and 100% Satisfaction Guaranteed. Top to learn more

Perfect except for what could be some technical flaws
'Koyaanisqatsi' is a great film and I have watched it many times...I have listened to the original soundtrack even more. I also enjoyed musical cues that were in the movie that were not in the original soundtrack release; I used to have to watch the movie to hear these unreleased musical cues/cuts. Naturally, as someone who has almost every Glass release I was glad to see they would finally add these other cues onto a complete version of this amazing soundtrack.Listening to the completed soundtrack creates a mood that is much more like watching the film itself as you hear some of the pieces weaving right into each other as they do in the film (rather than silence between tracks). The incorporation of some of the actual sounds from the film in the extra cues works much better than I thought it would. So it is a fine representation and recreation of the entire film's soundtrack onto CD and worth five stars for concept and reproduction of the original film music...
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July 29, 2009 (Central FL) | Helpful Votes: 24 | Rating: 4

The complete soundtrack is available, but still not here.
This is a piece of music that is tightly connected to the film it was written for, to the point where sometimes the editing of the film was done to match the rhythm of the music. It still stands alone as a wonderful piece of music, but previous releases of "soundtrack albums" have all been sadly truncated versions. (I know, because I've bought all of them, also the VHS at an extortionate 3-digit price during those dark years when the film was unavailable.)This one is much better, but the killer problem I have with it is that it describes itself as complete, but also describes itself as a "13-track-76-minute album". But that is still not the complete soundtrack. I also have the DVD, which is 85:42 long. Koyaanisqatsi, though it contains several distinct pieces, is a single piece of music that needs to be COMPLETE and listened to in its entirety, including the long, fading radio chatter at the end. As noted elsewhere, the sound quality of the CD is also iffy in places...
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September 2, 2010 (Seattle, WA United States, via Scotland) | Helpful Votes: 7 | Rating: 4

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Powaqqatsi - Life in Transformation

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Customer Review

Haunting, overwhelming and stangely hopeful
Video is no way to see Powaqqatsi or Koyaanisqatsi, seeing it on the big screen is the only way to capture Reggio's brilliant work. But if it is your only option, don't pass it up. I never imagined Reggio could follow up Koyaanisqatsi with such a gem...it gives me hope the third movie in the trilogy, Naqoyqatsi, will be as brilliant. Powaqqatsi shocks you out of the comfort of your safe middle class (or better) existence and reminds you that we are very much in the minority with our creature comforts. Yet, despite the haunting images and the curious juxtaposition of the Glass music, the film leaves you with courage that the human animal can rise above the harsh realities of the current state of our economically segregated world. These two movies changed my life. If you ever get a chance to see Glass perform the sound track live while he shows either move, don't miss it at any price. Now, where can I get my copy?
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July 23, 1999 | Helpful Votes: 10 | Rating: 5

Product Description

A spectaular, breathtaking five-part dreamscape about the nature of civilization and its ever-important impact on the environment, accompanied with music by Philip Glass. Produced by Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas! Directed by Godfrey Reggio. 1998/color/107 min/G. Top to learn more

Powaqqatsi, or "life in transformation," is the second part of a projected trilogy of experimental documentaries whose titles derive from Hopi compound nouns. The now legendary Koyaanisqatsi, or "life out of balance," was the first. Naqoyqatsi, or "life in war," once it obtains funding, will be 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 Top to learn more

This might be the only review you'll need to read. Although, some may want to argue as if my opinion is irrelivant.
When I first watched this film last night, I was rather disappointed. It was different in a BIG way from "Koyaanisqatsi". I then went to sleep going over the images that I saw in this film as I slept. The next morning, I had myself set down to watch it again. I learned this time, that my perspective was all wrong. I thought, probably just like everybody else, that this second installment of the "qatsi" trilogy was suppose to be more of what we saw in "Koyaanisqatsi." We shouldn't think this way at all. Don't connect these two films as if they have to be watched as one before the other. They ARE two separate projects with two separate ideas to be viewed with the mind's eye. You don't need to see "Koyaanisqatsi" first in order to understand Godfrey's next film "Powwaqatsi"."Powaqqatsi" is a masterful piece of work addressing a cold and/or warm view of several third world countries. Godfrey Reggio gave us this visual exactly as we should see it. Maybe it wasn't as...
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November 9, 2002 (of the vast Western Dystopian Wasteland) | Helpful Votes: 56 | Rating: 4

Please watch this trilogy in order.
Powaqqatsi (1988) is the second DVD in the Qatsi trilogy, an I suggest that you consider watching this release second. The first to view is Koyaanisqatsi (1983); the third, Naqoyqatsi (2002). With the filming of the trilogy taking over 20 years to complete, the advances in the music, technology and filming makes me suggest that you start from the beginning to watch how things have changed in that time. POWA (Powaqqatsi) focuses on life for people mainly in the southern hemisphere. Please also view my review of KOYA (Koyaanisqatsi), which I will complete shortly after submitting this. I plan to soon purchase NAQO (Naqoyqatsi) and will review that as well (obviously I found the film concept entertaining).KOYA focuses on the northern hemisphere's lifestyles of living with technology in all aspecfts of their lives while POWA shows life that is more driven by manual labor. Yet as the movie progresses, you see more and more hints of the introduction of technology, which will...
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September 9, 2003 (Baltimore, MD United States) | Helpful Votes: 24 | Rating: 4

BUY Powaqqatsi - Life in Transformation

Price with discount: $8.99 |

Customer Review

June 2, 2009 (Cincinnati) | Helpful Votes: 19 | Rating: 5

July 29, 2009 (Central FL) | Helpful Votes: 24 | Rating: 4

September 2, 2010 (Seattle, WA United States, via Scotland) | Helpful Votes: 7 | Rating: 4

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Baraka [Blu-ray]

Regular Price: $34.98 |

Customer Review

VASTLY IMPROVED VIDEO AND SOUND QUALITY!
I will not attempt to extol the virtues film itself (what more can I say than has already been said?), but of the new collector's edition: I too have the original DVD release, and the VHS release. This new transfer is AMAZING, and is exactly what the first DVD release should have been... PRISTINE video (very few artifacts, little or no pixelation), and IMMACULATE audio (crisp, clean, and great presence without sounding "over-processed"). If you have both versions and can't tell the difference, then it's time to watch it on a large screen TV, and clean yer ears out! The improvements are painfully obvious. This is a truly incredible film, and finally justice has been done with the fantastic quality of the consumer version. Like someone else said, give your old copy away, and BUY THIS VERSION now! I'm glad I picked it up, and you will be too.
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November 20, 2001 (Manassas, VA United States) | Helpful Votes: 191 | Rating: 5

Mesmerizing, beautiful, astounding . . .
The words mesmerizing, beautiful and astounding cannot begin to describe this wonderful DVD. Ron Fricke is to be commended highly for this moving work of art. I have a wide-screen HDTV and found the DVD to be much more moving than the VHS version I had seen on old TV in the past. If you have a choice--definitely go to the widescreen DVD version. The Dolby sound also was much enhanced over the previous version. I firmly believe ALL PEOPLE should view this film at least once in their lifetime--free from all external encumbrances--this film requires your undivided attention.All of a sudden, the world becomes a much smaller planet--one in which we all live in our own way and one in which every living being is important.If you are prone to cry at beauty--have a box of tissues handy. If you are not prone to cry at films, have a box of tissues handy anyway. You will probably need them. This is a very moving film. I was particularly impressed with the burning oil field...
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December 20, 2002 (Bend, OR 97701) | Helpful Votes: 228 | Rating: 5

Watch on the largest screen you can!
And crank down the bass a little (if you have a subwoofer). This movie gives the person with their DVD players, SUV and well- paying job to see something in this world that the viewer most likely has not seen, which is an intimate look at cultures, environments and nature the world over. With no concern of SARS or an expensive plane ticket, you feel afterwards that you truly experienced a global tour.Baraka begins at a rather cautious pace, and as each scene passes by your vision, the intensity and depth slowly but steadily increases. It's a bit hard to describe, but I feel in a way that it causes the viewer to look inward at his/her own view of what the world is about and what life means. In a way, it compells you to ask yourself some deep questions. Make sure to keep your attention on watching the movie with NO interruptions to get the full effect. Pausing for phone calls, snacks or bathroom breaks is verboten, so get everything done first!Baraka unfolds in the early...
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September 6, 2003 (Baltimore, MD United States) | Helpful Votes: 45 | Rating: 5

Product Description

Shot in breathtaking 70mm in 24 countries on six continents, Baraka is a transcendent global tour that explores the sights and sounds of the human condition like nothing you ve ever seen or felt before. These are the wonders of a world without words, viewed through man and nature s own prisms of symmetry, savagery, harmony and chaos. Baraka has now been fully restored from its original camera negative via state-of-the-art 8K UltraDigital mastering to create the most visually stunning DVD ever made.Includes over 80 minutes of all new Bonus Features. Top to learn more

The word Baraka means "blessing" in several languages; watching this film, the viewer is blessed with a dazzling barrage of images that transcend language. Filmed in 24 countries and set to an ever-changing global soundtrack, the movie draws some surprising connections between various peoples and the spaces they inhabit, whether that space is a lonely mountaintop or a crowded cigarette factory. Some of these attempts at connection are more successful than others: for instance, an early sequence segues between the daily devotions of Tibetan monks, Orthodox Jews, and whirling dervishes, finding more similarity among these rituals than one might expect. And there are other amazing moments, as when sped-up footage of a busy Hong Kong intersection reveals a beautiful symmetry to urban life that could only be appreciated from the perspective of film. The lack of context is occasionally frustrating--not knowing where a section was filmed, or the meaning of the ritual taking place--and some of the transitions are puzzling. However, the DVD includes a short behind-the-scenes featurette in which cinematographer Ron Fricke (Koyaanisqatsi) explains that the effect was intentional: "It's not where you are that's important, it's what's there." And what's here, in Baraka, is a whole world summed up in 104 minutes. --Larisa Lomacky Moore Top to learn more

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Koyaanisqatsi / Powaqqatsi (2 Pack)

Regular Price: $24.98 |

Customer Review

Moving and thought-provoking
"Koyaanisqatsi" has held up well over the years since I first saw it at the cinema. Its images were almost all as powerful via this DVD as I remember them having been 20 years ago. Those that have worn a little thin--notably the transition from a satellite view of a city to an extreme close-up of a computer chip--have done so because they have been so often imitated and repeated since "Koyaanisqatsi" was first seen. I found "Powaqqatsi" less riveting on this first viewing than "Koyaanisqatsi," but noticed that it resonated longer in my mind and provoked more thought and conversation later. Its images and ideas have remained with me for weeks now.The "Qatsi" films are unique works, neither documentary nor entertainment in the strict sense of either term. Nor are they mere visual social commentaries. The music of Philip Glass, the amazing, often context-less cinematography, the editing, and the philosophical underpinnings that drive the enterprise, all combine in a work that...
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December 14, 2002 (Huntington Beach,CA) | Helpful Votes: 41 | Rating: 5

A Cinematic Masterpiece......Experience "Qatsi"(Life)!...
This review refers to "Koyaanisqatsi" and "Powaqqatsi" (2-Pack) DVDs(MGM)....You'll want to make sure that when you watch these films, you will not have any interuptions. You will not even be able to tear yourself away from a minute of these moving and mind stimulating events. So turn of the cell phone, pagers and make sure the kids are tucked safely away!"Koyannisqatsi" and "Powaqqatsi" are the first and second in the "Qatsi" trilogy. A combination of great talents working together as one bring to film the most visually and musically stunning experience."Qatsi" is the Hopi word for life. In "Koyaanisqatsi", Director Godfrey Reggio, Composer Phillip Glass and Cinematographer Ron Fricke combine their brillance for "Life Out of Balance". From the beauty of Nature to the world of modern technology, the images are set to music in a documentary that needs no words.In "Powaqqatsi" we find "Life In Transformation". Once again Reggio and Glass...
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August 4, 2003 | Helpful Votes: 34 | Rating: 5

Product Description

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 Top to learn more

FINALLY available commercially on DVD, BUT....
....as another reviewer has said, KOYAANISQATSI is CROPPED. I own the limited edition DVD that was sold as a fundraiser around a year ago by the Institute for Regional Education (IRE) and it is in 4:3. The new MGM so-called "widescreen" release simply adds black bars to the top and bottom of the screen, with NO extra width shown- the other reviewer is 100% correct! I compared the IRE DVD with the new MGM commercial release on two DVD players at the same time, and the size of each picture is exactly the same, but the MGM release has black bars blocking Ron Fricke's cinematography. The bars take away 2 inches from the top and bottom of the screen of my 32" TV, or 4 inches of picture height total. I love widescreen movies, but purposely blocking out what was originally filmed is RIDICULOUS. KOY was originally filmed in 4:3, not widescreen.These films are the two greatest combinations of music and film ever made- it's just a shame to see KOY treated so poorly. Nice interviews...
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September 19, 2002 (PORTLAND, OR USA) | Helpful Votes: 56 | Rating: 4

BUY Koyaanisqatsi / Powaqqatsi (2 Pack)

Buy Koyaanisqatsi

If you haven’t seen Koyaanisqatsi (and you really should), it is an 80 minute film consisting of sped-up video footage of busy cities juxtaposed with peaceful untouched landscapes across the world with a poignant environmental message.

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Koyaanisqatsi News

Terence Malick Wrote A Letter Of Instruction To Every Projectionist Showing ...

The techniques and tropes he incorporates call to mind the work of Jordan Belson, the cinematography of 'Koyaanisqatsi' and the telescopic images of the Hubble Telescope. And I confess to the thrill of watching and waiting to see if… yes! no! wait
Die 39 Stufen

Aber insgesamt lässt mich der Film kalt, und die schönen Naturaufnahmen erinnern mich an Koyaanisqatsi. Ω Der Filmschwurbler Bruno Dumont (L'humanité) ist ein Liebling der Auswahlleute von Cannes und ein chouchou von Michael Althen.