Powaqqatsi: Life in Transformation

Dear Garimpeiros*,

I recently watched the movie Powaqqatsi, part 2 of a trilogy of film collaborations by Godfrey Reggio and Philip Glass. Though not as powerful as part 1, Koyaanisqatsi, it was, nonetheless, a beautiful and intriguing piece--particularly to you garimpeiros, I would think.

One of the images that recurs throughout the film Powaqqatsi is that of humans carrying burdens and carrying them, particularly, on or with their heads. And that is how we see you in the beginning sequence of the film. That scene is undoubtedly the most moving of the entire production. There you are in Serra Pelada**, sometime before the 1990's when this ant hill of production closed down, 40,000 of you, struggling up from the depths of a great pit under great burdens of rock and mud.


Godfrey Reggio recounts that the filming in the mine was taking place as planned, when a man was accidentally hit on the head with a rock. The camera person asked if he should stop filming and help. Reggio maintained that their efforts to help would be unwanted and so they filmed instead. The image of two garimpeiros carrying another up the rough trail impresses the viewer as a video version of the Pieta. Pity him. Pity them. Pity us all for the burdens we must carry.

This piece of video art, Reggio says, is an attempt to use the medium to question the medium. I'm not totally sure what he means. Supposedly he traveled broadly across the southern hemisphere to capture images from life that show the effect of industry and technology on the world. I would have to say that the work doesn't hold together in the same way that Koyaanisqatsi did, but it is beautiful and the music of Philip Glass is, as always, wonderful (if you love Glass) or repetitive to the point of a scream (if you don't).

"The computer is the highest magic in the world and something that we are all in adoration of. And that's what these films are about," Godrey says. But the word powaqqatsi is from the Hopi language and means "sorcerer life" or an entity or way of life that consumes the life forces of other beings in order to further its own life. The context of the film is this technological order. It studies the impact of progress. There is the implication in the film that technology is eating up the native cultures of the world, but that implication doesn't imply violence as much as complicity of these cultures. Powaqqi may be a black magician, but if he/she is, it operates through allurement. If the Southern world is being subsumed by progress, it is submitting willingly.

The language of the music is consonant with the language of the film. Apparently Glass followed Reggio around the southern hemisphere, but didn't always travel with him. He visited some of the same places. His hope was to explore the universe of this discourse, where the great conundrum of our age is the most immediately puzzling. "We are," they say, "already cooking in the stew of this technological age." This is the great burden that we are carrying around on our heads.


One of my favorite scenes of the film is one captured by the camera playing games with the depth of field. A woman walks, impressively carrying on her head a basket, while what appears to be a modern group of marathon runners stride up upon her slowly. The effect is breathtaking.

Powaqqatsi displays for us this great burden, embodied by those, like you, who still walk with bared feet in the mud and through the dust.

I read that Colossus Minerals of Toronto is now developing plans along with a group of garimpeiros represented by Coomigasp to core drill for gold at Serra Pelada. Pity.

BRD

*Brazilian Gold Searchers
**Serra Pelada - Very Famous Gold Open Pit Mine in the west of Brazil

Koyaanisqatsi: Life out of Balance

Dear Godfrey Reggio,

I just finished watching Koyaanisqatsi*. As a long-time fan of Philip Glass, you can assume, correctly, that I did like it. As cult films go, this one, really is a valuable piece. I wasn't sure at first. Glass' music can be repetitive enough on it's own. To double that, double that, with images, images was, I thought, thought more than I could take. To double that, double that, with images, images was, I thought, yes I thought more, than I could, could take.



But not so. After a period of time, I became entranced. (I will tell you, though, I couldn't convince anyone to watch it with me, and now I have Powaqqatsi sitting on my entertainment center waiting for it's lonely viewing.) As I began to watch, I immediately realized, as with much of the Glass body of work, that one must open oneself to the experience of the whole. To judge the piece by its particulate parts is to miss the impact of the structure built line upon line, swell upon swell, measured measure upon measure. So, with this, I sat back and let it build, both visually and musically. It was worth the construction.

It's really impossible to identify a single clip from this film that communicates it's power. However, if I were to choose one, I think it would be this (though the copy I found online is not the best quality.) Still. . .



You said, in an interview, "This 1978 film meant to stir up an experience of the subject. It's a journey, and the journey is important, not the end point." And I guess that's so, although your end point was so pointed that it could hardly be ignored. What is amazing to me, in watching this is that it was put created before the 1986 Challenger disaster, so the climax is like a premonition, or like a Hopi prophecy**.

"A container of ashes might one day be thrown from the sky, which could burn the land and boil the oceans."

I discovered that in that final sequence from Koyaanisqatsi, there were two rocket launch films used. One is an ultra slow motion of a Saturn V launch from right at the launch pad level. The other is the first Atlas-Centaur from May 8, 1962. You can see a flapping liquid nitrogen line by the engine and the venting liquid hydrogen some seconds into flight.

I breezed around on your qatsi website to read what you had to say about your masterpiece. Your site says this was:

Created between 1975 and 1982. The film is an apocalyptic vision of the collision of two different worlds -- urban life and technology versus the environment. The musical score was composed by Philip Glass. . . The film's role is to provoke, to raise questions that only the audience can answer. This is the highest value of any work of art, not predetermined meaning, but meaning gleaned from the experience of the encounter. The encounter is my interest, not the meaning.

Can I ask you, candidly, what the heck Francis Coppola had to do with this film? Did his name get stuck on at some point to give it some kind of sales credibility? Too bad! Oh, nevermind, you don't have to answer that question, Wikipedia just did.

The film won the "Francis Ford Coppola Presents" endorsement at the 1982 New York Film Festival, and Coppola is now credited as an executive producer. In an interview, Godfrey Reggio says "...[Coppola] would like to do everything possible to make this available to the public, so he put his name on it"

At any rate, I cannot talk about Koyaanisqatsi without remarking about two moments in the film. The first rocked me because of the financial crisis that we all have been watching play out over the course of the past couple weeks. My heart pounded at the images around about second 59. But the whole of this section (the Pruiet Igoe section) shook me. Perhaps the remembrances of 9/11, brought to my mind by later moments, I don't know, but I felt with this very deeply.



Then, of course, the final moments that I referred to above. Very intense.

I wanted you to know.



Thank you, and Philip, for your artistry. And to Francis, I guess, for helping keep it in circulation.

BRD

PS - It appears that the entire film can be accessed from this link at hulu.

*From the Hopi language, (n.) 1. Crazy life. 2. Life in turmoil. 3. Life out of balance. 4. Life disintegrating. 5. A state of life that calls for another way of living.

**The lyrics from this piece are few. Many are just a repetition of the word Koyaanisqatsi. But those that are used are translations of these hopi prophecies.

"If we dig precious things from the land, we will invite disaster."
"Near the Day of Purification, there will be cobwebs spun back and forth in the sky."
"A container of ashes might one day be thrown from the sky, which could burn the land and boil the oceans."