experimental video reviews - Koyaanisqatsi

The 88 minute experimental film Koyaanisqatsi, created by Godfrey Reggio, is seemly a sequence of random footage of real life, with the images being speeded up and slowed down in unison with continuous music. The word "Koyaanisqatsi" translates to "life out of a balance" and the images seen by the audience support this.

In the opening moments of the film, the images seen in shot are those of simple caveman drawing on the inside of a cave, the shot then changes to a number of birds-eye, landscape shots of vast natural landscapes. While we are viewing these shots the word "Koyaanisqatsi" fades into the shot in bright red letters stays there for a few moments the fades out again. Throughout the film the camera shots are in colour and the speed of the cuts varies depending on the pace of the sound.

The non-diegetic sounds heard within "Koyaanisqatsi" are created by classic music composer Phillip Glass. It is a mixture of natural and technological type music, which plays throughout the film. There occasions in the film when the music speeds up, it looks as if the music dictates the pace of the images. However, there are times when it appears that the images are dictating the tempo of the music. The music is unique in the sense that there is no understandable dialect for those who understand English. Also, because there is no use of actors in the film, there is no dialogue.

Upon the surface of "Koyaanisqatsi" it will be easy to think that the images being presented by the creator have no relevance to anything or no narrative to it. In truth there are a number of different underlying themes in the 88 minute feature. The narrative of the piece shows the development and evolution of mankind in the sequence of images collected. In addition, it shows the repetition of life through seeing the actions of machines and industry being repeated thousands of times.

A thought which crossed my mind when watching Koyaanisqatsi was, that I would not be surprised if the car company Honda created this to be one of their advertisements. But it the occurred to me that, many things in the media, have used Reggio's revolutionary film, as a basis to work from.