Powaqqatsi - Life in Transformation

Starring:Christie Brinkley, David Brinkley, Dan Rather, Pope John Paul II, Cheryl Tiegs, Philip Glass
Director: Godfrey Reggio
Studio: MGM (Video & DVD)
Product Type: DVD

Editorial Review:
Amazon.com
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

Powaqqatsi - Life in Transformation
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I M H O

When will that train ever stop?

different kind of film experience

Mind-numbing and offensive anti-industrial film will prolong poverty

A visual collage!

Powaqqatsi - Life in Transformation
Starring: Christie Brinkley , David Brinkley , Dan Rather , Pope John Paul II , and Cheryl Tiegs
Director: Godfrey Reggio
Manufacturer: MGM (Video & DVD)
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

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ASIN: B000068OCT
Release Date: 2002-09-17

Amazon.com

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.

Description

Hailed by audiences and critics around the world as mesmerizing (The Detroit News), this second installment of writer/director Godfrey Reggio's apocalyptic qatsi trilogy is quite simply one of the most magnificent visual and aural spectacles ever made (L.A. Daily News)! Combining stunning cinematography with the exquisite music of award-winning composer Philip Glass, Powaqqatsi is a breathtaking experience working on many levels'emotional, spiritual, intellectual andaesthetic (The Hollywood Reporter)! Bold, haunting and epic in scale, this extraordinary film calls into question everything we think we know about contemporary society. By juxtaposing images of ancient cultures with those of modern life, Powaqqatsi masterfully portrays the human cost of progress. It is a film that engages the soul as well as the mind; it is truly an absorbing experience (Movies on TV and Videocassette).

Customer Reviews:

I M H O.......2006-12-31

This movie drags on and on...it is has some striking scenery in the beginning and you oooh and ahhh for the first 15 minutes, but then it just drags out until I finally turned it off...Boring! I can see what point they were trying to make, but they took too long to make it. Everything could have surmised in a nice, short 30 minute version...Don't waste your time...

When will that train ever stop?.......2006-11-19

With a never ending train (in Africa, raw materials trains can be even longer - several kilometers I've heard), with that inimitable music to boot, Powaqquatsi shifts gear to reveal the complex world of Western civilisation after lots of shots of people in the third world and various graphic image collections from the rural developing world. The opening sequence of miners hauling up dirt is powerful. Amongst the best things about the film is the music and the skill in editing. Lots of people stare back at you and the question that screams in the head is "what do we want?" or "what do they want?" and questions about meanings and futilities. All the images are so special, usually slowed down. Sitting under the approaching feet of people on a ferris wheel. There are connected sequences of film such as people washing, people crossing roads, people carrying things. I think this film will be so inspirational to anyone who would like to create something that may arouse a sense of meaning and questioning. Our complex world in all its beauty and poverty is revealed devastatingly. There is a little girl who walks in front of some graffiti, looking at the camera, she stops, stares at the camera having walked almost out of the shot, and then she resumes walking to disappear.

different kind of film experience.......2006-08-07

This movie begs you to think...it bombards you with images, sometimes directly related...sometimes thematically linked... and tells a story about the world, forcing you to see the intricacies of life, how the world has been transformed...what in that transformation is abrasive and harmful, and what is intriguing, mysterious and beautiful...unfortunately the music isn't a brilliant as the film...but still...for anyone interested in indie film/documentary and image-flooding...this is an excellent buy.

Mind-numbing and offensive anti-industrial film will prolong poverty.......2006-05-18

In this film, Godfrey Reggio gives in to the MTV method of "persuasion". The edits are often quick cuts, to the point where the viewer's mind just shuts down so it can passively absorb the film's message: that (as another reviewer has stated) economic "exploitation" produces poverty.

The film shows lots of backbreaking physical labor. It shows lots and lots and lots of poor, poor people. One of the most important images in the film is of a huge truck overtaking a young boy walking down a dusty street. The boy is engulfed in dust kicked up by the truck. I guess this means that trucks are bad.

The causes of poverty simply cannot be learned by viewing a mere progression of images without a story. If you try this, you only see how poor the poor are, and how rich the rich are, and you end up infering that one person's great wealth causes another's poverty. This is *the big lie* of the 20th century. This lie itself causes poverty, because it teaches people to waste time fighting the rich rather than learning to become rich.

Wealth is good. The pursuit of wealth is good. Yes, technological change can create unemployment for those with obsolete skills. But the extent to which technology has improved the world cannot be denied. Should technology providers feel guilty for making trucks available to people who used to use donkeys for transport? Should employers feel guilty for not wanting to hire people with obsolete skills? Hell no.

The subject matter of Powaqqatsi could have been delivered much more honestly -- it could have showed more of the abject misery of life before technology compared to the reduced misery after it. Instead, it shows people working very hard (and suffering) in semi-technological societies, and it tacitly implies technology is the cause of the hard labor and suffering. As if the labor and suffering wasn't harder before technology!

Koyaanisqatsi was a much better film: it allowed for a reasonable interpretation of the images. This film simply assaults you with pain, and hopes your anger will do the talking.

It is telling that the promotional tag-line for the film, "Life in Transformation", isn't in the film. The film, at its end, instead defines Powaqqatsi as "an entity, a way of life, that consumes the life forces of other beings in order to further its own life". In other words: parasitism. I guess, though, that "Life consuming life" or "Industrial Leeches" wasn't vague enough to sell the movie to unsuspecting consumers. I bought this DVD hoping to see how technology has beneficially transformed impoverished nations (even if that wasn't the directors intention).

What a slap in the face.

A visual collage!.......2006-04-08

Told in documental style, the film concentrates around the exploitation of the tribes in the Third World. Nevertheless, the arresting images cannot avoid the shallowness of the final purpose.

Maybe this is the weakest link of this Trilogy.

Koyaanisqatsi - Life Out of Balance / Powaqqatsi - Life in Transformation / Naqoyqatsi - Life As War (3 Pack)

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Koyaanisqatsi - Life Out of Balance / Powaqqatsi - Life in Transformation / Naqoyqatsi - Life As War (3 Pack)
Director: Godfreey Reggio
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

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The Assault on Reason

Product Features:

Widescreen
Language: English
Trailer (s)
3 Disc Set

ASIN: B000QWA9LC

Product Description

Koyaanisqatsi - Life Out of Balance: Prepare to experience a truly remarkable film--a cinematic masterpiece so extraordinary that it regales the senses, stimulates the mind and actually "redefines the potential of filmmaking". Celebrated director Godfrey Reggio, innovative cinematographer Ron Fricke and Golden Globe winning composer Philip Glass have created a "spellbinding film so rich in beauty and detail that with each viewing it becomes a new and different film". ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Powaqqatsi - Life in Transformation: Hailed by audiences and critics around the world as "mesmerizing", this second installment of writer/director Godfrey Reggio's apocalyptic "qatsi" trilogy is "quite simply one of the most magnificent visual and aural spectacles ever made"! Combining stunning cinematography with the exquisite music of award-winning composer Philip Glass, Powaqqatsi is a "breathtaking experience working on many levels... emotional, spiritual, intellectual and aesthetic"! Bold, haunting and epic in scale, this extraordinary film calls into question everything we think we know about contemporary society. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Naqoyqatsi - Life As War: Miramax Home Entertainment and Oscar-winning filmmaker Steven Soderbergh present Naqoyqatsi - Life As War, from filmmaker Godfrey Reggio, in collaboration with composer Phillip Glass, whose original score features renowned cellist Yo-Yo Ma. In this cinematic concert -- the concluding film of the Qatsi Trilogy preceded by the critically acclaimed Koyaanisqatsi and Powaqqatsi -- mesmerizing images reanimated from everyday reality, then visually altered with state-of-the-art digital techniques, chronicle the shift from a world organized by the principles of nature to one dominated by technology, the synthetic, and the virtual.

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