Koyaanisqatsi (1982)

User Rating:

8.1/10   

Director:

Godfrey Reggio

Writers:

Ron Fricke (writer)
Michael Hoenig (writer)
(more)

Release Date:

27 October 1983 (Australia)

Genre:

Documentary | Music

Tagline:

October 4, 1982. More than 5,000 people filled the sold out Radio City Music Hall to experience a remarkable film event. That event was the world premiere of KOYAANISQATSI. Now everyone can share the power of that experience.

Plot:

A movie with no conventional plot: merely a collection of expertly photographed scenes. Subject matter has a highly environmental theme.

Plot Keywords:

Environment | Technology | Nature | Native American | Cloud

Awards:

5 wins & 1 nomination

Cast

Ted Koppel

...

Himself (archive footage) (uncredited)

Directed by
Godfrey Reggio

Writing credits (in alphabetical order)
Ron Fricke		writer
Michael Hoenig		writer
Godfrey Reggio		writer
Alton Walpole		writer

Produced by
Francis Ford Coppola	....	executive producer
Mel Lawrence	....	associate producer
Roger McNew	....	associate producer
T. Michael Powers	....	associate producer
Godfrey Reggio	....	producer
Lawrence Taub	....	associate producer (as Lawrence S. Taub)
Alton Walpole	....	associate producer

Original Music by
Philip Glass

Cinematography by
Ron Fricke

Film Editing by
Ron Fricke
Alton Walpole

Sound Department
David Brownlow	....	sound effects recordist
Doc Goldstein	....	audio technical assistant
David W. Gray	....	stereo sound consultant: Dolby
David B. Hancock	....	organ location recording
Joe Lopes	....	recording engineer: RCA Studios
Dominick Maita	....	recording engineer: RPM Studios
Steve Maslow	....	sound re-recording mixer
Tom Meloney	....	dubbing machine recordist
David Rivas	....	sound effects editor
David Rivas	....	sound effects recordist
Thomas Scott	....	sound consultant (as Tom Scott)
Michael Stocker	....	audio and electronic engineering
Michael Stocker	....	sound effects recordist
Randy Thom	....	sound effects recordist

Visual Effects by
Thomas Edmon	....	optical consultant
Jane Gudwin	....	optical consultant
Wayne V. McGee	....	optical consultant

Camera and Electrical Department
Neil Bockman	....	assistant camera
David Brownlow	....	assistant camera
Christine Gibson	....	associate cinematographer
Phillip Harrington	....	still photographer: microchip
Hillary Harris	....	additional cinematographer
Roy Hememnez	....	grip
Robert Hill	....	assistant camera
Karl Kernberger	....	still photographer: rock painting
Reinhard Lichter	....	special camera modification
Wayne V. McGee	....	still photographer: animation
Roger McNew	....	assistant camera
Mark Muich	....	grip
Dean Natzas	....	grip
Robert Palmer	....	grip
Louis Schwartzberg	....	additional cinematographer
Bruce Hill	....	ultra high speed photography (uncredited)

Editorial Department
Cheryl Bloch	....	second assistant editor
Gary Burritt	....	negative cutter
Tim Fennell	....	second assistant editor
Bob Hagans	....	color timer
Robert Hill	....	assistant editor
Dennis Jakob	....	consultant: editing
Tove Johnson	....	assistant editor
Susan Marcinkus	....	assistant editor
Ian Masters	....	post-production consultant
Anne Miller	....	associate editor
Matvey Shatz	....	color timer

Music Department
Walter Bachauer	....	music consultant
Seymour Barab	....	musician: cello (as The Philip Glass Ensemble)
John Beal	....	musician: bass (as The Philip Glass Ensemble)
Jean Dane	....	musician: cello (as The Philip Glass Ensemble)
Allan Dean	....	musician: french horn (as The Philip Glass Ensemble)
Walter Deck	....	musician: tuba (as The Philip Glass Ensemble)
George Flynn	....	musician: trombone (as The Philip Glass Ensemble)
Jon Gibson	....	musician: saxophone (as The Philip Glass Ensemble)
Peter Gordon	....	musician: french horn (as The Philip Glass Ensemble)
Mark Gould	....	musician: trumpet (as The Philip Glass Ensemble)
Nancy Hemmings	....	musician: Tibetan bells
Lowell Hershey	....	musician: trumpet (as The Philip Glass Ensemble)
Michael Hoenig	....	composer: additional music
Michael Hoenig	....	musical director
Theodore Israel	....	musician: viola (as The Philip Glass Ensemble)
Jill Jaffe	....	musician: viola (as The Philip Glass Ensemble)
Jack Kripl	....	musician: saxophone, flute and clarinet (as The Philip Glass Ensemble)
Jack Kripl	....	musicians' contractor
Beverley Lauridsen	....	musician: cello (as The Philip Glass Ensemble)
Charles Lewis	....	musician: trumpet (as The Philip Glass Ensemble)
Marcia Mikulak	....	music consultant
Bob Mintzer	....	musician: saxophone and bass clarinet (as The Philip Glass Ensemble)
Sharon Moe	....	musician: french horn (as The Philip Glass Ensemble)
Kermit Moore	....	musician: cello (as The Philip Glass Ensemble)
Kurt Munkacsi	....	music producer: Philip Glass music
Tom Nyfenger	....	musician: piccolo and flute (as The Philip Glass Ensemble)
Keith O'Quinn	....	musician: bass trombone (as The Philip Glass Ensemble)
Richard Peck	....	musician: saxophone (as The Philip Glass Ensemble)
Samuel Pilafian	....	musician: viola (as The Philip Glass Ensemble)
Susan Pray	....	musician: viola (as The Philip Glass Ensemble)
James Pugh	....	musician: tuba (as The Philip Glass Ensemble)
Albert Richmond	....	musician: trombone (as The Philip Glass Ensemble)
Michael Riesman	....	conductor: Philip Glass music
Michael Riesman	....	musician: keyboards (as The Philip Glass Ensemble)
Michael Riesman	....	musician: solo organ
Russell Rizner	....	musician: french horn (as The Philip Glass Ensemble)
Bob Smith	....	musician: trombone (as The Philip Glass Ensemble)
Lew Soloff	....	musician: trumpet (as The Philip Glass Ensemble)
Brooks Tillotson	....	musician: french horn (as The Philip Glass Ensemble)
Henry Wolff	....	musician: Tibetan bells
Frederic Zlotkin	....	musician: bass (as The Philip Glass Ensemble)

Other crew
Bruce Adams	....	pilot: aerial cinematography
Paul Alexander	....	special assistant: Philip Glass
Walter Bachauer	....	script editor
Neil Bockman	....	location access
Larry Browne	....	production assistant
Cybelle Carpenter	....	special consultant to director
Russ Deal	....	explosive engineer
Elizabeth Emerson	....	pilot: aerial cinematography
Steve Goldin	....	coordinator: IRE
Ronald B. Gold	....	location access
Ronald P. Gold	....	distribution researcher
Sally Jackson	....	production assistant
John Kimmey	....	consultant: Hopi prophecy
Dennis Kootshongsie	....	consultant: Hopi prophecy
James Kootshongsie	....	consultant: Hopi prophecy
Jeffrey Lew	....	special consultant to director
Michael Lowatewama	....	consultant: Hopi prophecy
Michael Lowatewama	....	linguistic research on title
Ekkehart Malotki	....	consultant: Hopi prophecy (as Dr. Ekkehart Malotki)
Ekkehart Malotki	....	linguistic research on title (as Dr. Ekkehart Malotki)
Paul Pascarella	....	title designer
Barbara Pecarich	....	production assistant
Barbara Pecarich	....	special consultant to director
T.A. Price	....	special consultant to director
Godfrey Reggio	....	concept
Donald C. Rogers	....	technical director: Goldwyn Sound Facility
Bradford Smith	....	creative consultant
Thomas F. Tarbet	....	consultant: Hopi prophecy
Dan Williams	....	pilot: aerial cinematography
Langdon Winner	....	special consultant to director

Thanks
Bruce Conner	....	special thanks

Production Companies

• Francis Ford Coppola Presents
• IRE Productions
• Santa Fe Institute for Regional Education

Distributors

• Island Alive (1983) (USA) (theatrical)
• New Cinema (1983) (USA) (theatrical)
• Pacific Arts Video Records (1983) (USA) (VHS)
• Folkets Bio (1984) (Sweden) (theatrical)
• Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) (1985) (USA) (TV)
• Image Entertainment (1989) (USA) (video) (laserdisc)
• Arsenal (2001) (Germany) (theatrical) (re-release)
• MGM Home Entertainment (2002) (Germany) (DVD)
• MGM/UA Home Entertainment (2002) (USA) (DVD)
• MGM/UA Home Entertainment (2002) (USA) (VHS)
• Creative Exposure (????) (Canada) (theatrical)
• 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment (????) (Brazil) (DVD)
• Look Vídeo (????) (Brazil) (VHS)
• Van Blad (????) (Brazil) (DVD)

Other Companies

• Antilles Records  soundtrack
• Gamma Research  optical effects
• Goldwyn Sound Facility  music re-recorded at
• Greenstreet Studios  additional recording (as Greenstreet Studios, NYC)
• Jerry Takigawa Design  DVD package design
• Pacific Title  titles and opticals
• The Western Wind Vocal Ensemble  vocals

Also Known As:

Koyaanisqatsi: Life Out of Balance (USA) (poster title)

Runtime:

86 min

Country:

USA

Language:

None

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Sound Mix:

Dolby

Certification:

Canada:G (video rating) | UK:U | Finland:S | Sweden:7 | USA:Unrated | Germany:6 | Australia:G | Singapore:PG

Filming Locations:

Chicago, Illinois, USA

Company:

Francis Ford Coppola Presents

Trivia:

Godfrey Reggio did a series of short films for the Institute of Regional Education, consisting of a stream of images to the theme of the invasion of privacy. It was here that Reggio met cinematographer 'Ron Fricke'. An attempt to bring these films to national attention failed, thus the next logical step was to create a feature film - "Koyaanisqatsi".

Goofs:

Crew or equipment visible: About an hour into the movie, the camera operator is reflected in the elevator's glass window as the elevator passes "between" floors while shooting the escalators.

Movie Connections:

Featured in Wanderlust (2006) (TV)

A cinematic tour de force

"It is up for the viewer to take for herself what Koyanisqaatsi means. For some people it's an environmental film, for some people it's an ode to technology, for some people it's a piece of sh-t, for other people it moves them deeply. It depends on who you ask" - Godfrey Reggio

So, Koyanisqaatsi. Boring junk to some, an involving masterpiece to others, and God knows what other adjective-noun combinations are out there (you can probably guess my opinion from the rating above). Most of these descriptions are fairly subjective, but it would definitely be wrong to regard Koyanisqaatsi as anti-cinema. It is anything but. Cinema, in its purest form, is a marriage of sound and visuals; everything else is just decoration. Dialogue? Storyline? Koyanisqaatsi harks back to an age when cinema was simply a filmed record of a situation. Was it not the Lumiere brothers who are generally regarded as the first pioneers of cinema? And is it not the case that their films comprised of nothing more than situations like a couple feeding their baby, workers leaving a factory, or the (in)famous Train Leaving A Station, which went down in folklore as causing people to flee the auditorium in panic thinking they were about to be hit by a train as it approached them on-screen? Koyanisqaatsi is cinema returning to its roots, to the days when the possibilities for film as an art form were wide open, free of commercial constraints and fickle audiences too narrow in scope to accept anything other than what they view as the given norm.

In a way it's fairly irrelevant what Koyanasqaatsi meant to me on a personal level, though I might get to that later. What's important is what Koyanasqaatsi represents. It's an interesting attempt (and a successful one in my view) to illustrate how a narrative can be created simply by editing together seemingly loosely related scenes and images. It reminds me of another cinematic milestone, the Kuleshov experiment, in which two separate images where edited together to create a third meaning, and which helped establish what is now known as Russian montage (and speaking of the Russian montage tradition, anyone who has seen Vertov's The Man With The Movie Camera will no doubt find traces of it in Koyanisqaatsi and vice versa). Koyanisqaatsi takes it one step further, perhaps even to its logical conclusion, using editing to create a new meaning for the entire narrative as a whole. It works on a gut level and sparks an emotional response, in a way it demands a response, be it boredom, amazement... it really depends on the person (as illustrated by the Reggio quote above). As such it's an example of cinema at its most subjective.

Coming back to the influence Man With A Movie Camera no doubt had on this film, I think what Godfrey Reggio has done here is take this specific style of film-making and turn it into what I, personally, view as a cinematic statement on humanity- and our technology's relationship with the environment around us. It's a pessimistic film, filled with Cold War anxiety (though it hasn't lost any of its relevance) - and in retrospect, I also found it reminiscent of an age when America still had a strong avantgarde movement in the shape of people like Reggio or Laurie Anderson (and in a way it's an interesting coincidence that 1983 also gave birth to another experimental documentary, Chris Marker's Sans Soleil, which is equally rich in scope and tackles the same philosophical issues, albeit from a slightly different angle).

I really wonder if the western world could produce a film like this today, in an age where cinema audiences are more fickle than ever, demanding a cut every three seconds and some sort of "surprise twist" at the end, with hardly a niche left for the Godrey Reggios of this world. But in a way I suppose it doesn't really matter. Koyanisqaatsi, to me at least, is one of the richest cinematic experiences anyone could possibly hope to have, and I doubt I'll see a film which will move me quite like this for a long time to come.