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103-458: Koyaanisqatsi is a 1982 American non-narrative documentary film directed and produced by Godfrey Reggio , featuring music composed by Philip Glass and cinematography by Ron Fricke . The film consists primarily of slow motion and time-lapse footage (some of it in reverse) of cities and many natural landscapes across the United States. The visual tone poem contains neither dialogue nor

206-507: A Digital Video Broadcasting (DVB) signal. Zappers are, according to media scholar Henry Jenkins , people who have a casual relationship with their televisions. Zappers do not remain on one channel for long, but continually skip from show to show, stopping for only a few minutes at a time on a particular channel. Referred to in Henry Jenkins' book, Convergence Culture , published in 2006, describes individuals who "constantly flit across

309-557: A hand-held camera and ground footage taken using a tripod. The first aerial footage was too "shaky", so additional footage was taken from a camera mounted onto the airplane. Fricke traveled back to New York City in 1977, during which the New York City blackout occurred. Footage of the blackout was filmed in Harlem and the South Bronx, and the film was desaturated to match the appearance of

412-510: A hydroelectric dam , oil drilling , metalworking , and concludes with a nuclear weapon test forming a mushroom cloud over the desert. The following sequence begins with sunbathers on a beach next to a power plant, followed by tourists visiting another power plant. The next images show clouds reflected on the façade of a glass skyscraper, Boeing 747 aircraft taxiing at an airport, cars driving on urban freeways , and various types of military vehicles . Destruction of large buildings

515-459: A "horrifying image", To produce the television commercials the IRE hired cinematographer Ron Fricke , who worked on the project for two years. The television advertisements aired during prime-time programming and became so popular that viewers would call the television stations to learn when the next advertisement would be aired. Godfrey described the two-year campaign as "extraordinarily successful", and as

618-412: A 1963 Canadian short abstract collage film of discarded footage and city street scenes, had a profound influence on Lucas and sound designer/editor Walter Murch . Lucas greatly admired pure cinema and at film school became prolific at making 16mm nonstory noncharacter visual tone poems and cinéma vérité, with such titles as Look at Life , Herbie , 1:42.08 , The Emperor , Anyone Lived in

721-548: A Pretty (how) Town , Filmmaker , and 6-18-67 . Lucas's tributes to 21-87 appear in several places in Star Wars , with the phrase, " the Force ", said to have been inspired by 21-87 in part. Lucas throughout his entire career was passionate and interested in camerawork and editing, defining himself as a filmmaker as opposed to a director, and he loved making abstract visual movies that create emotions purely through cinema. Music

824-476: A camera crew to the Four Corners , which was chosen for filming for its "alien look". Due to the limited budget, Fricke shot with a 16 mm zoom lens onto 35 mm film. To compensate for the lens size, a 2× extender was added, which turned it into a full 35 mm zoom lens, allowing footage to be clearly captured onto 35 mm film. The two-week shoot included aerial footage taken from an airplane using

927-596: A color test of the animated section. He then created An Optical Poem (1937) for MGM , but received no profits because of the way the studio's bookkeeping system worked. Walt Disney had seen Lye's A Colour Box and became interested in producing abstract animation. A first result was the Toccata and Fugue in D Minor section in the "concert film" Fantasia (1940). He hired Oskar Fischinger to collaborate with effects animator Cy Young , but rejected and altered much of their designs, causing Fischinger to leave without credit before

1030-497: A dynamic organism, offering a captivating glimpse of New York during its gritty peak. The short-fim maintains a continuous sense of movement, creating an illusion of organic evolution and transformation via time-lapse photography. In this portrayal, the city evolves into a dynamic entity pulsing with energy, vitality, and perpetual regeneration. It embodies a colossal organism, thriving on the life force of those drawn to it, each seeking to conquer its urban landscape. Titled "Organism," it

1133-618: A family of musicians and analysed the elements of painting by reducing it into his "Generalbass der Malerei", a catalogue of typological elements, from which he would create new "orchestrations". In 1918 Viking Eggeling had been engaging in Dada activities in Zürich and befriended Hans Richter. According to Richter, absolute film originated in the scroll sketches that Viking Eggeling made in 1917–1918. On paper rolls up to 15 meters long, Eggeling would draw sketches of variations of small graphic designs, in such

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1236-614: A few dozens of short films over the years. The Nazis censorship against so-called " degenerate art " prevented the German abstract animation movement from developing after 1933. The last abstract motion picture screened in the Third Reich was Hans Fischinger 's Tanz der Farben (i.e. Dance of the Colors ) in 1939. The film was reviewed by the Film Review Office and by Georg Anschütz for

1339-528: A film student at USC School of Cinematic Arts , where he saw many more inspiring cinematic works in class, particularly the visual movies coming out of the National Film Board of Canada like Arthur Lipsett 's 21-87 , the Canadian cameraman Jean-Claude Labrecque 's cinéma vérité 60 Cycles , the work of Norman McLaren , and the visualise cinéma vérité documentaries of Claude Jutra . Lipsett's 21-87 ,

1442-570: A helicopter before. Reggio later chose to shoot in Los Angeles and New York City. As there was no formal script, Fricke shot whatever he felt would "look good on film". While filming in New York City, Fricke developed an idea to shoot portraits of people. A grey paper backdrop was displayed in Times Square, and Fricke stood 10 feet (3 m) back with the camera. People walking by started posing for

1545-401: A home video release. IRE enforced their legal and contractual rights by creating a federal court lawsuit. IRE distributed a privately issued release of the film on DVD. The release was available to those who made a donation of at least $ 180 to IRE, and was distributed in a sleeve that was signed by Reggio. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) eventually received the rights to the film, and Koyaanisqatsi

1648-445: A jumble of objects and reality thrown together at random." Among the proposed methods were: "Cinematic musical researches", "Daily exercises in freeing ourselves from mere photographed logic" and "Linear, plastic, chromatic equivalences, etc., of men, women, events, thoughts, music, feelings, weights, smells, noises (with white lines on black we shall show the inner, physical rhythm of a husband who discovers his wife in adultery and chases

1751-409: A leaflet about it and claimed that many people growing up with the hand-colored films of Georges Méliès and Ferdinand Zecca would try their hand on painting on film at that time. In 1913 Léopold Survage created his Rythmes colorés : over 100 abstract ink wash / watercolor drawings that he wanted to turn into a film. Unable to raise the funds, the film was not realized and Survage only exhibited

1854-426: A longer film. They shot all kinds of material in the street and in a studio, used Murphy's special beveled lenses and crudely animated showroom dummy legs. They chose the title Ballet Mécanique from an image by Francis Picabia that had been published in his New York 391 magazine, which had also featured a poem and art by Man Ray. They ran out of money before they could complete the film. Fernand Léger helped financing

1957-420: A more minimal, formal style. The movement also encompasses the work of the feminist critic/cinematic filmmaker Germaine Dulac , particularly Thème et variations (1928), Disque 957 (1928), and Cinegraphic Study of an Arabesque . In these, as well as in her theoretical writing, Dulac's goal was "pure" cinema, free from any influence from literature, the stage, or even the other visual arts. The style of

2060-477: A narrative film and a non-narrative film can be rather vague and is often open for interpretation. Unconventional imagery, concepts and structuring can obscure the narrativity of a film. Terms such as absolute film , cinéma pur , true cinema and integral cinema have been used for non-narrative films that aimed to create a purer experience of the distinctive qualities of film, like movement, rhythm and changing visual compositions. More narrowly, "absolute film"

2163-787: A neutral background with a moving camera. A number of devices can be regarded as early media for abstract animation or visual music, including color organs , chinese fireworks , the kaleidoscope , musical fountains and special animated slides for the magic lantern (like the chromatrope). Some of the earliest animation designs for stroboscopic devices (like the phénakisticope and the zoetrope) were abstract, including one Fantascope disc by inventor Joseph Plateau and many of Simon Stampfer 's Stroboscopische Scheiben (1833). Abstract film concepts were shaped by early 20th century art movements such as Cubism , Expressionism , Dadaism , Suprematism , Futurism , Precisionism and possible others. These art movements were beginning to gain momentum in

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2266-410: A nonfiction film can be constructed as a narrative." Ruttmann's 1927 Berlin: Symphony of a Great City , Dziga Vertov 's Man with a Movie Camera (1929) and other cinéma vérité works can be considered as documentaries in the cinéma pur style. Documentary filmmaker, artist, and choreographer Hilary Harris (1929 – 1999) invested 15 years in crafting his time-lapse film portraying Manhattan as

2369-489: A phonograph. In 1927 Kasimir Malevich had created a 3-page scenario in manuscript with explanatory color drawings for an "Artistic-Scientific film" entitled Art and the Problems of Architecture: The Emergence of a New Plastic System of Architecture , an instructional film about the theory, origin and evolution of suprematism . Initially there were plans to have the film animated in a Soviet studio, but Malevich took it along on

2472-505: A private screening shortly after its completion. Coppola told Reggio that he was waiting for a film such as Koyaanisqatsi and that it was "important for people to see", so he added his name into the credits and helped present and distribute the film. Coppola also decided to introduce and end the film with footage of pictographs from the Great Gallery at Horseshoe Canyon in Utah after visiting

2575-673: A reason not to change the channel" (Jenkins 2006:77). This technique has been perfected in American Idol via the cliffhanger commercial breaks and ending, convincing viewers to "stay tuned following these messages" or watch the show the next time it airs (Jenkins 2006:77). The format or genre was pioneered with the Italian tv show Blob , and was an instant great success. It was first broadcast on April 17, 1989, and shortly after adopted by CanalPlus in France with Le Zapping . Canal Plus will then spread

2678-449: A restored digital transfer of the film in 1.85:1 aspect ratio, approved by director Godfrey Reggio. On Rotten Tomatoes , Koyaanisqatsi has an approval rating of 91% based on 22 reviews, with an average rating of 8/10. The website's critical consensus reads " Koyaanisqatsi combines striking visuals and a brilliant score to produce a viewing experience that manages to be formally daring as well as purely entertaining." Metacritic assigned

2781-538: A result, Ritalin (methylphenidate) was eliminated as a behavior-modifying drug in many New Mexico school districts. But after the campaign ended, the ACLU eventually withdrew its sponsorship, and the IRE unsuccessfully attempted to raise millions of dollars at a fundraiser in Washington, D.C. The institute only had $ 40,000 left in its budget, and Reggio was unsure how to use the small amount of funds. Fricke insisted to Reggio that

2884-526: A teenager in the San Francisco Bay Area during the early 1960s, saw many exhilarating and inspiring abstract 16mm movies and nonstory noncharacter 16mm visual tone poems screened at cinematic artist Bruce Baillie 's independent, underground Canyon Cinema shows; along with some of Baillie 's own early visual motion pictures, Lucas became inspired by the work of Jordan Belson , Bruce Conner , Will Hindle , and others. Lucas then went on to enrol as

2987-469: A trip to Berlin and ended up leaving it for Hans Richter after the two had met. The style and colorfulness of Rhythmus 25 had convinced Malevich that Richter should direct the film. Due to circumstances the scenario did not get into the hands of Richter before the end of the 1950s. Richter created storyboards, two rough cuts and at least 120 takes for the film in collaboration with Arnold Eagle since 1971, but it remained incomplete. Richter had wanted to create

3090-533: A type of color organ. Eggeling happened to die a few days later. Oskar Fischinger met Walter Ruttmann at rehearsals for screenings of Opus I with live music in Frankfurt. In 1921 he started experimenting with abstract animation in wax and clay and with colored liquids. He used such early material in 1926 in multiple-projection performances for Alexander Laszlo 's Colorlightmusic concerts. That same year he released his first abstract animations and would continue with

3193-473: A vocalized narration: its tone is set by the juxtaposition of images and music. Reggio explained the lack of dialogue by stating "it's not for lack of love of the language that these films have no words. It's because, from my point of view, our language is in a state of vast humiliation. It no longer describes the world in which we live." In the Hopi language , the word koyaanisqatsi means "life out of balance". It

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3296-578: A way that a viewer could follow the changes in the designs when looking at the scroll from beginning to end. For a few years Eggeling and Richter worked together, each on their own projects based on these ides, and created thousands of rhythmic series of simple shapes. In 1920 they started working on film versions of their work. Walter Ruttmann, trained as a musician and painter, gave up painting to devote himself to film. He made his earliest films by painting frames on glass in combination with cutouts and elaborate tinting and hand-coloring. His Lichtspiel: Opus I

3399-585: A widescreen aspect as it originally was presented in theaters. On January 13, 2012, a Blu-ray version (screen ratio 16:9) was released in Germany. The Blu-ray was also released in Australia by Umbrella Entertainment on March 22, 2012. In December 2012, Criterion released a remastered DVD and Blu-ray of Koyaanisqatsi , as part of a box set containing the Qatsi Trilogy. The release features 5.1 surround sound audio and

3502-421: A zapper into a loyal fan (Jenkins 2006:75). This has led to a movement to slow down the zapper. Reality television has been suggested to be this bridge from zapper to loyal fan, being "built up of 'attractions,' short, highly emotionally charged units that can be watched in or out of sequence" (Jenkins 2006:77). American Idol is one such show, as it is "designed to pull in every possible viewer and to give each

3605-531: Is depicted, including one at the Pruitt-Igoe housing project in St. Louis . A time-lapse of a crowd queueing is followed by shots of people walking along streets in slow motion . The next sequence features a sunset reflected in the glass of a skyscraper, before depicting people interacting with modern technology. Traffic, rush hours, technology-aided labors are depicted viscerally. The sequence begins to come full circle as

3708-419: 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. The film's cinematographer Ron Fricke went on to direct Baraka , a pure cinema movie that is often compared to Koyaanisqatsi . Non-narrative film Narrative film

3811-601: Is most commonly associated with television , where the practice became common with the wide availability of the remote control . The first published use of the term is November 1986 , in an article by The Wall Street Journal . Viewers' propensity to channel surf was apparently a factor leading toward the current ATSC standard for terrestrial television , digital television in North America . An ATSC signal can be locked onto and start being decoded within about one second, while it can take several seconds to begin decoding

3914-411: Is the dominant aesthetic, though non-narrative film is not fully distinct from that aesthetic. While the non-narrative film avoids "certain traits" of the narrative film, it "still retains a number of narrative characteristics". Narrative film also occasionally uses "visual materials that are not representational". Although many abstract films are clearly devoid of narrative elements, distinction between

4017-489: Is the first film in The Qatsi Trilogy , which was followed by Powaqqatsi (1988) and Naqoyqatsi (2002). The trilogy depicts different aspects of the relationship between humans, nature and technology. Koyaanisqatsi is the best known of the trilogy and is considered a cult film . However, because of copyright issues, the film was out of print for most of the 1990s. In 2000, the film was selected for preservation in

4120-441: Is the practice of quickly scanning through different television channels or radio frequencies to find something interesting to watch or listen to. Modern viewers, who may have cable or satellite services beaming down dozens if not hundreds or thousands of channels, are frequently channel surfing. It is common for people to scan channels when commercial broadcasters switch from a show over to running commercials . The term

4223-494: Is to say of poetry which is truly cinematographic, has been provided us by some remarkable films, vulgarly called documentaries, particularly Nanook and Moana . According to Timothy Corrigan in The Film Experience , non-narrative film is distinct from nonfiction film, though both forms may overlap in documentary films . In the book Corrigan writes, "A non-narrative film may be entirely or partly fictional; conversely,

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4326-507: The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). The campaign involved invasions of privacy and the use of technology to control behavior. Instead of making public service announcements, which Reggio felt "had no visibility", advertising spots were purchased for television, radio, newspapers, and billboards. Over thirty billboards were used for the campaign, and one design featured a close-up of the human eye, which Reggio described as

4429-600: The Ballets Suédois) and Clair himself. The film showed absurd scenes and used slow motion and reverse playback, superimpositions, radical camera angles, stop motion and other effects. Erik Satie composed a score that was to be performed in sync with certain scenes. Henri Chomette adjusted the film speed and shot from different angles to capture abstract patterns in his 1925 film Jeux des reflets de la vitesse ( The Play of Reflections and Speed ). His 1926 film Cinq minutes du cinéma pur ( Five minutes of Pure Cinema ) reflected

4532-711: The Film-Kurier . The director Herbert Seggelke was working on the abstract motion picture Strich-Punkt-Ballett (i.e. Ballet of Dots and Dashes) in 1943, but could not finish the film during the war. Mieczysław Szczuka also attempted to create abstract films, but seems never to have realized his plans. Some designs were published in 1924 in the avant-garde magazine block as 5 Moments of an Abstract Film . In 1926 dadaist Marcel Duchamp released Anémic Cinéma , filmed in collaboration with Man Ray and Marc Allégret . It showed early versions of his rotoreliefs, discs that seemed to show an abstract 3-D moving image when rotating on

4635-479: The National Film Board of Canada 's animation unit in 1941. Direct animation was seen as a way to deviate from cel animation and thus a way to stand out from the many American productions. McLaren's direct animations for NFB include Boogie-Doodle (1941), Hen Hop (1942), Begone Dull Care (1949) and Blinkity Blank (1955). Harry Everett Smith created several direct films, initially by hand-painting abstract animations on celluloid. His Early Abstractions

4738-757: The Santa Fe Film Festival on April 27, 1982. Later that year, the film premiered at the Telluride Film Festival on September 5. It was screened again at the New York Film Festival (NYFF) on October 4, which was promoted as the film's "world premiere", despite its previous screening in September. While the NYFF was based in the Lincoln Center , an exception was made to screen Koyaanisqatsi at

4841-737: The dadaist cinéma pur movement. Abstract film or absolute film is a subgenre of experimental film and a form of abstract art . Abstract films are non-narrative, contain no acting and do not attempt to reference reality or concrete subjects. They rely on the unique qualities of motion, rhythm, light and composition inherent in the technical medium of cinema to create emotional experiences. Many abstract films have been made with animation techniques. The distinction between animation and other techniques can be rather unclear in some films, for instance when moving objects could either be animated with stop motion techniques, recorded during their actual movement, or appear to move due to being filmed against

4944-658: The "Qatsi" trilogy, which includes "Koyaanisqatsi" (1982), " Powaqqatsi " (1988), and " Naqoyqatsi " (2002). These films, scored by composer Philip Glass , offer visual experiences that examine the effects of technology, consumerism, and environmental issues on the world. Reggio's work employs techniques such as time-lapse photography and slow motion to prompt reflection on contemporary existence. Following in Reggio's footsteps, his cinematographer Ron Fricke achieved notable milestones within this approach, including "Chronos," " Baraka ," and " Samsara ." Director George Lucas , growing up as

5047-557: The 'Soirée du coeur à barbe" program in Paris. The film consisted mainly of abstract textures, with moving photograms that were created directly on the film strip, abstract forms filmed in motion, and light and shadow on the nude torso of Kiki of Montparnasse ( Alice Prin ). Man Ray later made Emak-Bakia (16 mins, 1926); L'Étoile de Mer (15 mins, 1928); and Les Mystères du Château de Dé (27 mins, 1929). Dudley Murphy had seen Man Ray's Le Retour à la Raison and proposed to collaborate on

5150-415: The 16 mm footage. Reggio and Fricke came across time-lapse footage in "some low-visibility commercial work". They felt such footage was "the language [they] were missing", and collectively decided to implement time-lapse as a major part of the film to create "an experience of acceleration". For the time-lapse footage, Fricke purchased a Mitchell camera, and built a motor with an intervalometer , which

5253-448: The 1910s. Italian Futurists Arnaldo Ginna and his brother Bruno Corra made hand-painted films between 1910 and 1912 that are now lost. In 1916 they published The Futurist Cinema manifesto together with Giacomo Balla , Filippo Tommaso Marinetti , Remo Chiti and Emilio Settimelli. They proposed a cinema that "being essentially visual, must above all fulfill the evolution of painting, detach itself from reality, from photography, from

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5356-814: The French cinéma pur artists probably had a strong influence on newer works by Ruttmann and Richter, which would no longer be totally abstract. Richter's Vormittagsspuk (Ghosts before Breakfast) (1928) features some stop motion, but mostly shows live action material with cinematographic effects and visual tricks. It is usually regarded as a dadaist film. The clearest examples of pure cinema are said by essayist and filmmaker Hubert Revol to be documentaries. Documentary must be made by poets. Few of those within French cinema have understood that in our country, we possess innumerable elements and subjects to make, not just insignificant ribbons (of film), but splendid films lively and expressive... The purest demonstration of pure cinema, that

5459-556: The Hopi word koyaanisqatsi : The following screen shows a translation of the three Hopi prophecies sung in the final segment of the film: Over the end credits , the sound of human voices overlapping on television broadcasts can be heard. In 1972, Godfrey Reggio , of the Institute for Regional Education (IRE), was working on a media campaign in Albuquerque, New Mexico, which was sponsored by

5562-625: The UFA-Palast theater at the Kurfurstendamm in Berlin. Its 900 seats soon sold out and the program was repeated a week later. Eggeling's Symphonie diagonale , Richter's Rhythmus 21 and Rhythmus 23 , Walter Ruttmann's Opus II , Opus III and Opus IV were all shown publicly for the first time in Germany, along with the two French dadaist cinéma pur films Ballet Mécanique and René Clair's Entr'acte , and Ludwig Hirschfeld-Mack 's performance with

5665-531: The United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress for being "culturally, aesthetically, or historically significant". Koyaanisqatsi runs for 86 minutes and consists of a montage of visuals accompanied by a minimalist score, without narration or dialogue. It opens with an ancient cave painting , followed by a close-up of a rocket launch, while a deep bass voice chants

5768-473: The air we breathe ..." In the Hopi language , the word koyaanisqatsi literally translates to "chaotic life". It is a compound word composed of the bound form koyaanis- ("corrupted" or "chaotic") and the word qatsi ("life" or "existence"). The Hopi Dictionary defines koyaanisqatsi as "life of moral corruption and turmoil" or "life out of balance", referring to the life of a group. The latter translation has been used in promotional materials for

5871-458: The airport every day for two weeks. To keep the shot of the 747 within the frame, the camera was slowly moved by increasing the voltage to the gear motors. In addition to footage shot by Fricke, some of the footage of people and traffic in New York City was shot by cinematographer Hilary Harris . During post-production, Reggio was introduced to Harris' Organism (1975), which predominately features time-lapse footage of New York City streets. Reggio

5974-443: The camera, thinking it was a still camera , and several shots from the setup ended up in the film. Reggio was not on location in Times Square when Fricke shot the footage and thought the idea of shooting portraits of people was "foolish". Upon viewing the footage, Reggio decided to devote an entire section of the film to portraits. The footage was processed with a special chemical to enhance the film's shadows and details, as all footage

6077-498: The colourful Rhythmus 25 followed similar principles, with noticeable suprematist influence of Kasimir Malevich 's work. Rhythmus 25 is considered lost. Eggeling debuted his Horizontal-vertikalorchester in 1923. The film is now considered lost. In November 1924 Eggeling was able to present his new finished film Symphonie diagonale in a private screening. On 3 May 1925 the Sunday matinee program Der absolute Film took place in

6180-450: The completion and contributed a cubist Charlie Chaplin image that was jerkily animated for the film. It is unclear if Léger contributed anything else, but he got to distribute the film in Europe and took sole credit for the film. Ray had backed out of the project before completion and did not want his name to be used. Murphy had gone back to the U.S.A. shortly after editing the final version, with

6283-434: The creation of an absolute language of form, a desire common to early abstract art. Ruttmann wrote of his film work as "painting in time". Absolute filmmakers used rudimentary handicraft, techniques, and language in their short motion pictures that refuted the reproduction of the natural world, instead, focusing on light and form in the dimension of time, impossible to represent in static visual arts. Viking Eggeling came from

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6386-436: The deal that he could distribute the film there. Avant-garde artist Francis Picabia and composer Erik Satie asked René Clair to make a short film to be shown as the entr'acte of their Dadaist ballet Relâche for Ballets suédois . The result became known as Entr'acte (1924) and featured cameo appearances by Francis Picabia, Erik Satie, Man Ray , Marcel Duchamp, composer Georges Auric , Jean Borlin (director of

6489-529: The dial—watching snippets of shows rather than sitting down for a prolonged engagement" (Jenkins 2006:75). More of a tendency than a defining characteristic, zappers can fluctuate from the habit, depending on what is on at any given time, personal feelings toward a show, amongst other variables. The concept was overstated in the 1990s when Phillip Swann "wrote in TV.com: How Television is Shaping Our Future: ‘Few viewers today can sit through an entire program without picking up

6592-420: 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

6695-408: The end credits. During the end titles, the film gives Jacques Ellul , Ivan Illich , David Monongye , Guy Debord , and Leopold Kohr credit for inspiration. Moreover, amongst the consultants to the director are listed names including Jeffrey Lew, T. A. Price, Belle Carpenter, Cybelle Carpenter, Langdon Winner , and Barbara Pecarich. Koyaanisqatsi was first publicly screened as a workprint at

6798-498: The film a weighted average score of 72 out of 100, based on 10 critics, indicating "generaly favourable reviews". In 1983, the film was entered into the 33rd Berlin International Film Festival . Czech pedagogue Rudolf Adler , in his textbook for film educators, describes Koyaanisqatsi as "formulated with absolute precision and congenial expression." It has also been described as a postmodernist film . Koyaanisqatsi

6901-452: The film and is one of the five definitions listed before the closing credits. In the score by Philip Glass , the word "koyaanisqatsi" is chanted at the beginning and end of the film in an "otherworldly" dark, sepulchral basso profondo by singer Albert de Ruiter over a solemn, four-bar organ-passacaglia bassline. Three Hopi prophecies sung by a choral ensemble during the latter part of the "Prophecies" movement are translated just prior to

7004-516: The film totally in Malevich's spirit, but concluded that in the end he could not discern how much of his own creativity withheld him from executing the scenario properly. Mary Ellen Bute started making experimental films in 1933, mostly with abstract images visualizing music. Occasionally she applied animation techniques in her films. Len Lye made the first publicly released direct animation entitled A Colour Box in 1935. The colorful production

7107-666: The film's title. The images dissolve into a sequence of landscapes with large geological formations in the deserts of the Southwestern United States . Time-lapse imagery shows shadows moving across the landscapes at fast speeds, and bats are seen and heard flying out of a cave . The next sequence primarily features clouds moving in time-lapse, in addition to a waterfall , an ocean , and its waves in slow-motion . This segues into footage of reservoirs , cultivated flowers , surface mining operations, electrical transmitters , power stations , evaporation ponds ,

7210-465: The film, as well as extended versions of tracks from the original album. This album was released as Koyaanisqatsi , rather than a soundtrack of the film. In 2009, a remastered album was released under Philip Glass' own music label, Orange Mountain Music, as Koyaanisqatsi: Complete Original Soundtrack . This recording, with a length over 76 minutes, includes the original sound-effects and additional music that

7313-461: The footage into a 20-minute reel, but "without regard for message or political content". I just shot anything that I thought would look good on film. Shooting bums , as well as buildings, didn't matter. It was all the same from my standpoint. I just shot the form of things. —Ron Fricke The IRE was continuously receiving funding and wanted to continue the project in 1976, using 35 mm film. After quitting his waiting job, Fricke traveled with

7416-515: The graceful and solemn. It must become antigraceful, deforming, impressionistic, synthetic, dynamic, free-wording." "The most varied elements will enter into the Futurist film as expressive means: from the slice of life to the streak of color, from the conventional line to words-in-freedom, from chromatic and plastic music to the music of objects. In other words it will be painting, architecture, sculpture, words-in-freedom, music of colors, lines, and forms,

7519-554: The initial release, which grossed $ 46,000 throughout its one-week run, and was the highest-grossing film in the San Francisco Bay Area that week. It was released in Los Angeles a month later where it grossed $ 300,000 at two theaters within 15 weeks. Additional releases in select cities throughout the United States continued in September 1983, beginning with a release in New York City on September 15. In mid-October, Koyaanisqatsi

7622-400: The larger Radio City Music Hall due to the film's "spectacular visual and sound quality". Triumph Films offered to distribute the film, but Reggio turned down the offer as he wanted to work with a smaller company so he could be more involved with the release. He chose Island Alive as the distributor, a company newly formed in 1983 by Chris Blackwell of Island Records , and Koyaanisqatsi

7725-422: The lay of each of them. Night shots of buildings are shown, as well as of people from all walks of life, from beggars to debutantes. A rocket in flight explodes, and the camera follows one of its engines as it falls back towards Earth. The film concludes with another image of the Great Gallery pictograph, this time with smaller figures. Preceding the closing credits , the end title card shows five translations of

7828-458: The lover – rhythm of soul and rhythm of legs)." About a month later the short film Vita Futurista was released, directed by Ginna in collaboration with Corra, Balla and Marinetti. Only a few frames of the film remain and little else of any Futurist Cinema work seems to have been made or preserved. Around 1911 Hans Lorenz Stoltenberg also experimented with direct animation, rhythmically piecing together tinted film in different colors. He published

7931-509: The manufacture of cars in an assembly-line factory is shown. Daylight highway traffic is shown, followed by the movement of cars, shopping carts, televisions in an assembly line, and elevators. Time-lapses of various television shows being channel surfed are shown. In slow motion, several people react to being candidly filmed; the camera stays on them until the moment they look directly at it . Cars then move speedier. Shots of microchips and satellite photography of cities are shown, comparing

8034-757: The medium to its elemental origins" of "vision and movement". It declares cinema to be its own independent art form that should not borrow from literature or stage. As such, "pure cinema" is made up of nonstory, noncharacter films that convey abstract emotional experiences through unique cinematic devices such as camera movement and camera angles, close-ups, dolly shots, lens distortions, sound-visual relationships, split-screen imagery, super-impositions, time-lapse photography , slow motion , trick shots , stop-action, montage (the Kuleshov effect , flexible montage of time and space), rhythm through exact repetition or dynamic cutting and visual composition. Cinéma pur started around

8137-567: The money could be used to produce a film, which led to the production of Koyaanisqatsi . Reggio and Fricke chose to shoot unscripted footage and edit it into an hour-long film. Production began in 1975 in St. Louis, Missouri. 16 mm film was used due to budget constraints, despite the preference to shoot with 35 mm film . Footage of the Pruitt–Igoe housing project was shot from a helicopter, and Fricke nearly passed out during filming, having never flown in

8240-406: The pictures separately. Mary Hallock-Greenewalt used templates and aerosol sprays to create repeating geometrical patterns on hand-painted films. These extant films were probably made around 1916 for her Sarabet color organ, for which she filed 11 patents between 1919 and 1926. The films were not projected, but one viewer at a time could look down into the machine at the film itself. The Sarabet

8343-738: The piece was completed. Fischinger's two commissions from The Museum of Non-Objective Painting did not really allow him the creative freedom that he desired. Frustrated with all the trouble with filmmaking he experienced in America, Fischinger did not make many films afterwards. Apart from some commercials, the only exception was Motion Painting No. 1 (1947), which won the Grand Prix at the Brussels International Experimental Film Competition in 1949. Norman McLaren , having carefully studied Lye's A Colour Box , founded

8446-421: The piece's 21 minutes. When the piece is at its fastest, it is characterized by a synthesizer playing the piece's bass line ostinato . Glass's music for the film is a highly recognizable example of the minimalist school of composition, which is characterized by heavily repeated figures, simple structures, and a tonal (although not in the traditional common practice sense of the word) harmonic language. Glass

8549-453: The remote and checking out another channel . . . Today’s viewer needs constant gratification: If she’s not entertained or intrigued for any stretch of time, she will flip the dial'" (Jenkins 2006:75). After Initiative Media published its magazine The Initiative declaring that loyal fans are more valuable than zappers, television networks attempted to combat the zapper by increasing the personal appeal of their television shows , converting

8652-514: The same period with the same goals as the absolute film movement and both mainly concerned dadaists. Although the terms have been used interchangeably, or to differentiate between the German and the French filmmakers, a very noticeable difference is that very few of the French cinéma pur films were totally non-figurative or contained traditional (drawn) animation, instead mainly using radical types of cinematography, special effects , editing, visual effects and occasionally some stop motion . The term

8755-622: The site and becoming fascinated by the ancient sandstone murals. The film's score was composed by Philip Glass and was performed by the Philip Glass Ensemble , conducted by Michael Riesman. One piece written for the film, "Façades", was intended to be played over a montage of scenes from New York's Wall Street . It ultimately was not used in the film; Glass released it as part of his album Glassworks in 1982. The opening for "The Grid" begins with slow sustained notes on brass instruments. The music builds in speed and dynamics throughout

8858-652: Was an extremely influential aspect of absolute film, and one of the biggest elements, other than art, used by abstract film directors. Absolute film directors are known to use musical elements such as rhythm/tempo, dynamics, and fluidity. These directors sought to use this to add a sense of motion and harmony to the images in their films that was new to cinema, and was intended to leave audiences in awe. In her article "Visual Music" Maura McDonnell compared these films to musical compositions due to their careful articulation of timing and dynamics. Channel surfing Channel surfing (also known as channel hopping or zapping )

8961-593: Was coined by filmmaker Henri Chomette , brother of filmmaker René Clair . The cinéma pur film movement included Dada artists, such as Man Ray , René Clair and Marcel Duchamp . The Dadaists saw in cinema an opportunity to transcend "story", to ridicule "character," "setting," and "plot" as bourgeois conventions, to slaughter causality by using the innate dynamism of the motion picture film medium to overturn conventional Aristotelian notions of time and space. Man Ray's Le Retour à la Raison (2 mins) premiered in July 1923 at

9064-487: Was commissioned to promote the General Post Office . Oskar Fischinger moved to Hollywood in 1936 when he had a lucrative agreement to work for Paramount Pictures . A first film, eventually entitled Allegretto , was planned for inclusion in the musical comedy The Big Broadcast of 1937 . Paramount had failed to communicate that it would be in black and white, so Fischinger left when the studio refused to even consider

9167-408: Was compiled around 1964 and contains early works that may have been created since 1939, 1941 or 1946 until 1952, 1956 or 1957. Smith was not very concerned about keeping documentation about his oeuvre and frequently re-edited his works. Cinéma pur ( French: [sinema pyʁ] ; lit.   ' pure cinema ' ) was an avant-garde film movement of French filmmakers, who "wanted to return

9270-493: Was filmed from the top of a building through a double exposure , with ten-second delay between frames. The first take was shot throughout the day for twelve hours, then the film was rewound and the same scene was shot at night for twenty minutes. The scene with the Boeing 747 on the runway was filmed at Los Angeles International Airport, and was the longest continuous shot in the film. Fricke and his focus puller , Robert Hill, filmed at

9373-499: Was finalised in 1975 and is recognised as a precursor to Godfrey Reggio 's " Koyaanisqatsi " (1982). Very little had been said about the importance of this short film. Nevertheless, it was the spark from which a visual revolution occurred in documentary filmmaking. The non-linear and not-narrative documentary current found its world recognition with Godfrey Reggio. He is a filmmaker known for his exploration of various themes related to human life and society. Amongst his works stand out

9476-470: Was first publicly demonstrated at John Wanamaker's New York department store in 1922. Some of the earliest abstract motion pictures known to survive are those produced by a group of artists working in Germany in the early 1920s: Walter Ruttmann , Hans Richter , Viking Eggeling and Oskar Fischinger . Absolute film pioneers sought to create short length and breathtaking films with different approaches to abstraction-in-motion: as an analogue to music, or as

9579-778: Was first screened in March 1921 in Frankfurt. Hans Richter finished his first film Rhythmus 21 (a.k.a. Film ist Rhythmus ) in 1921, but kept changing elements until he first presented the work on 7 July 1923 in Paris at the dadaist Soirée du coeur à barbe program in Théâtre Michel . It was an abstract animation of rectangular shapes, partly inspired by his connections with De Stijl . Founder Theo van Doesburg had visited Richter and Eggeling in December 1920 and reported on their film works in his magazine De Stijl in May and July 1921. Rhytmus 23 and

9682-651: Was impressed with Harris' work and subsequently hired him to work on Koyaanisqatsi . Footage filmed by cinematographer Louis Schwartzberg was added into the cloud sequence, and additional stock footage was provided by MacGillivray Freeman Films . While Reggio was working on post-production at the Samuel Goldwyn Studio in 1981, he met film director Francis Ford Coppola through an associate from Zoetrope Studios , Coppola's production company. Before shooting The Outsiders (1983) and Rumble Fish (1983), Coppola requested to see Koyaanisqatsi , and Reggio arranged

9785-486: Was one of the first composers to employ minimalism in film scoring, paving the way for many future composers of that style. The choral pieces were sung for the film by the Western Wind Vocal Ensemble , a NYC-based 6-singer choral group specializing in choral and vocal music from many different eras and places, co-founded by William Zukof and Elliot Z. Levine . An abbreviated version of the film's soundtrack

9888-406: Was released in 1983 by Island Records . Despite the fact that the amount of music in the film was nearly as long as the film itself, this 1983 soundtrack release was only 46 minutes long, and only featured some of the film's pieces. In 1998, Philip Glass re-recorded the film score for Nonesuch Records with a length of 73 minutes. This new recording includes new additional tracks that were cut from

9991-505: Was released on DVD by MGM Home Entertainment on September 18, 2002, coinciding with the release of Naqoyqatsi (2002). Both films were available in a two-disc box set. Each DVD includes a documentary with interviews by Reggio and Glass and trailers for the Qatsi trilogy . Unlike the IRE release, which featured the film in the open matte format in which it was filmed, the MGM release was cropped into

10094-547: Was released onto 40 to 50 screens throughout the country. It was a surprise arthouse hit as well as a popular presentation at colleges and universities. It ultimately grossed $ 3.2 million at the box office, and became the second-highest-grossing documentary of the 1980s, following Roger & Me (1989). Koyaanisqatsi was originally released on VHS and laserdisc by Michael Nesmith 's Pacific Arts Video . The rights to Koyaanisqatsi were passed through various multinational entertainment companies, which eventually prevented

10197-481: Was shot only with existing lighting. The IRE's $ 40,000 was exhausted after the filming, and almost two cases of film had been used. The unedited footage was screened in Santa Fe, New Mexico, but Fricke said it was "boring as hell" and there were "not that many good shots". Fricke later moved to Los Angeles, and took a job as a waiter, unable to get a job in the film industry. While Fricke was working in Los Angeles, he edited

10300-559: Was the company's first release. Select theaters distributed a pamphlet that defined the title and the Hopi prophecies sung in the film, as well as a copy of the soundtrack from Island Records. The first theatrical run featured four-track Dolby Stereo sound, while later runs featured monaural sound. The film's initial limited release began in San Francisco at the Castro Theatre on April 27, 1983. The producers spent $ 6,500 on marketing

10403-418: Was used for the works of a group of filmmakers in Germany in the 1920s, that consisted, at least initially, of animated films that were totally abstract. The French term cinéma pur was coined to describe the style of several filmmakers in France in the 1920s, whose work was non-narrative, but hardly ever non-figurative. Much of surrealist cinema can be regarded as non-narrative films and partly overlaps with

10506-526: Was used in the film. The music has become so popular that the Philip Glass Ensemble has toured the world, playing the music for Koyaanisqatsi live in front of the movie screen. Reggio stated that the Qatsi films are intended to simply create an experience and that "it is up [to] the viewer to take for himself/herself what it is that [the film] means." He also said that "these films have never been about

10609-421: Was used to precisely move the camera between frames. The system was powered by a gel cell battery that lasted for twelve hours, which enabled Fricke to shoot without the use of a generator . Most time-lapse shots were filmed at a frame rate of 1½ frames per second. Fricke wanted the footage to "look normal" and not contain any "gimmicky" special effects. The time-lapse shot overlooking the freeway in Los Angeles

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