The Qatsi Trilogy
You had some questions about the film clips we watched in class yesterday, so I looked them up. And of course Wikipedia had some of the best information.
The first clip was the trailer for Koyaanisqatsi, which was released in 1982.
The film consists primarily of slow motion and time-lapse photography of cities and many natural landscapes across the United States. In the Hopi language, the word Koyaanisqatsi means ‘crazy life, life in turmoil, life out of balance, life disintegrating, a state of life that calls for another way of living’, and the film implies that modern humanity is living in such a way.
The second clip was the Introduction to Powaqqatsi, released in 1988.
Powaqqatsi is a Hopi word meaning “parasitic way of life” or “life in transition”. While Koyaanisqatsi focused on modern life in industrial countries, Powaqqatsi, which similarly has no dialogue, focuses more on the conflict in third world countries between traditional ways of life and the new ways of life introduced with industrialization.
The first scene is of a gold mine in Brazil, called Serra Pelada, in which the miners carry sacks of dirt for processing. Towards the end of a scene, we see some workers carrying another who has been struck by a falling rock.
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