Koyaanisqatsi is a 1982 American non-narrative documentary film directed and produced by Godfrey Reggio, featuring music by Philip Glass, cinematography by Ron Fricke and presented by filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola. Described as an "essay in images and sound on the state of American civilization", the film comprises a montage of stock footage, slow motion, and time-lapse visuals of natural and urban environments across the United States. Following its premieres at the Telluride and New York Film Festivals in 1982, it began a limited theatrical release the next year. Produced on a budget of $2.5 million, the film grossed $3.2 million at the box office, and was one of the highest-grossing documentaries of the 1980s.
The title comes from the Hopi word , meaning "life out of balance". It is the first film in the Qatsi trilogy, which was followed by Powaqqatsi (1988) and Naqoyqatsi (2002). The trilogy depicts different aspects of the relationship between humans, nature and technology. Koyaanisqatsi is the best known of the trilogy and is considered a cult film.Cult Movies on Videocassette, 1987 - Siskel and Ebert Movie Reviews
Synopsis
Koyaanisqatsi runs for 86 minutes and comprises a montage of visuals accompanied by minimal music, without narration, dialogue, or intertitles. The film is structured into 13 passages, which are demarcated by dramatic musical shifts in the score. It opens with pictographs from the Great Gallery of Horseshoe Canyon, followed by a close-up of a rocket launch, while a deep bass voice chants the film's title. The images dissolve into a sequence featuring landscapes of geological formations and dunes in the deserts of the American Southwest. Time-lapse imagery shows shadows quickly moving across landscapes, and bats flying out of a cave. Clouds move in time-lapse footage, which is followed by a waterfall, then ocean waves in slow-motion. This segues into footage of resources: reservoirs, cultivated flowers, surface mining, electrical power infrastructure, evaporation ponds, oil drilling, blast furnaces, and concludes with a nuclear weapons test forming a mushroom cloud over the desert.
The following sequence begins with people sun bathing on a beach next to a power plant, followed by people touring a power plant. The next images show clouds reflected on the façade of a glass skyscraper, Boeing 747 aircraft taxiing at an airport, cars driving on urban freeways, military vehicles and aircraft, and air-to-ground weaponry being deployed. The film continues with modern skyscrapers in New York City, followed by areas of urban decay. Dilapidated buildings and other abandoned infrastructure undergo demolition and form large dust clouds. The sequence concludes with a coda featuring time-lapse footage of clouds and sunlight reflected in façades of glass skyscrapers in time-lapse, followed by people walking through busy city streets in slow-motion.
The next sequence begins with an introduction that shows time-lapse footage of sunsets reflected in the façades of skyscrapers, wide shots of cities at night with vehicle lights moving fast along streets and freeways, and the moon disappearing behind a building. The rhythm of the music increases while time-lapse footage in cities show vehicles driving, crowds of people walking, shopping centers, factories, food processing plants, and channel surfing. As the sequence comes to a close, the music and visuals are at their fastest, until the sequence ends and the music goes silent.
Close-up shots of microchips are interspersed with satellite photography of city grids. The final sequence features various individuals of all social classes, some of whom look directly into the camera, accompanied by Hopi prophecies sung in the soundtrack. As the film's title is chanted in a deep voice, a rocket is launched and explodes shortly after take-off; the camera follows its debris as it falls back towards Earth. The film concludes with another image of the pictograph seen in the opening shot.
The end title card lists translations of the Hopi word koyaanisqatsi:
The following screen shows a translation of the three Hopi prophecies sung near the end of the film:
Production Background In 1972, Godfrey Reggio, of the Institute for Regional Education (IRE), was working on a media campaign in Albuquerque, New Mexico, which was sponsored by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). The campaign involved invasions of privacy and the use of technology to control behavior. Instead of making public service announcements, which Reggio felt "had no visibility", advertising spots were purchased for television, radio, newspapers, and billboards. Over thirty billboards were used for the campaign, and one design featured a close-up of the human eye, which Reggio described as a "horrifying image". To produce the television commercials the IRE hired cinematographer Ron Fricke, who worked on the project for two years. The television advertisements aired during prime-time programming and became so popular that viewers would call the television stations to learn when the next advertisement would be aired. Godfrey described the two-year campaign as "extraordinarily successful", and as a result, Ritalin (methylphenidate) was eliminated as a behavior-modifying drug in many New Mexico school districts. But after the campaign ended, the ACLU eventually withdrew its sponsorship, and the IRE unsuccessfully attempted to raise millions of dollars at a fundraiser in Washington, D.C. The institute had only $40,000 left in its budget, and Reggio was unsure how to use the small amount of funds. Fricke insisted to Reggio that the money could be used to produce a film, which led to the production of Koyaanisqatsi.
Filming
Reggio and Fricke chose to shoot unscripted footage and edit it into an hour-long film. Production began in 1975 in St. Louis, Missouri. 16 mm film was used due to budget constraints, despite the preference to shoot with 35 mm film. Footage of the Pruitt–Igoe housing project was shot from a helicopter, and Fricke nearly passed out during filming, having never flown in a helicopter before. Reggio later chose to shoot in Los Angeles and New York City. As there was no formal script, Fricke shot whatever he felt would "look good on film". While filming in New York City, Fricke developed an idea to shoot portraits of people. A grey paper backdrop was displayed in Times Square, and Fricke stood back with the camera. People walking by started posing for the camera, thinking it was a still camera, and several shots from the setup ended up in the film. Reggio was not on location in Times Square when Fricke shot the footage and thought the idea of shooting portraits of people was "foolish". Upon viewing the footage, Reggio decided to devote an entire section of the film to portraits. The footage was processed with a special chemical to enhance the film's shadows and details, as all footage was shot only with existing lighting. The IRE's $40,000 was exhausted after the filming, and almost two cases of film had been used. The unedited footage was screened in Santa Fe, New Mexico, but Fricke said it was "boring as hell" and there were "not that many good shots". Fricke later moved to Los Angeles, and took a job as a waiter, unable to get a job in the film industry. While Fricke was working in Los Angeles, he edited the footage into a 20-minute reel, but "without regard for message or political content".
The IRE was continuously receiving funding and wanted to continue the project in 1976, using 35 mm film. After quitting his waiting job, Fricke traveled with a camera crew to the Four Corners, which was chosen for filming for its "alien look". Due to the limited budget, Fricke shot with a 16 mm zoom lens onto 35 mm film. To compensate for the lens size, a 2× extender was added, which turned it into a full 35 mm zoom lens, allowing footage to be clearly captured onto 35 mm film. The two-week shoot included aerial footage taken from an airplane using a hand-held camera and ground footage taken using a tripod. The first aerial footage was too "shaky", so additional footage was taken from a camera mounted onto the airplane. Fricke traveled back to New York City in 1977, during which a major city-wide blackout occurred. Footage of the blackout was filmed in Harlem and the South Bronx, and the film was desaturated to match the appearance of the 16 mm footage.
Reggio and Fricke came across time-lapse footage in "some low-visibility commercial work". They felt such footage was "the language [they] were missing", and collectively decided to implement time-lapse as a major part of the film to create "an experience of acceleration". For the time-lapse footage, Fricke purchased a Mitchell camera, and built a motor with an intervalometer, which was used to precisely move the camera between frames. The system was powered by a gel cell battery that lasted for twelve hours, which enabled Fricke to shoot without the use of a generator. Most time-lapse shots were filmed at a frame rate of 1½ frames per second. Fricke wanted the footage to "look normal" and not contain any "gimmicky" special effects. The time-lapse shot overlooking the freeway in Los Angeles was filmed from the top of a building through a double exposure, with ten-second delay between frames. The first take was shot throughout the day for twelve hours, then the film was rewound and the same scene was shot at night for twenty minutes. The shot of the Boeing 747 was filmed at Los Angeles International Airport, and was the longest continuous shot in the film. Fricke and his focus puller, Robert Hill, filmed at the airport every day for two weeks. To keep the shot of the aircraft within the frame, the camera was slowly moved by increasing the voltage to the gear motors.
In addition to footage shot by Fricke, some of the footage of people and traffic in New York City was shot by cinematographer Hilary Harris. During post-production, Reggio was introduced to Harris' Organism (1975), which predominately features time-lapse footage of New York City streets. Reggio was impressed with Harris' work and subsequently hired him to work on Koyaanisqatsi. Footage filmed by cinematographer Louis Schwartzberg was added into the cloud sequence, and additional stock footage was provided by MacGillivray Freeman Films.
While Reggio was working on post-production at the Samuel Goldwyn Studio in 1981, he met film director Francis Ford Coppola through an associate from Zoetrope Studios, Coppola's production company. Before shooting The Outsiders (1983) and Rumble Fish (1983), Coppola requested to see Koyaanisqatsi, and Reggio arranged a private screening shortly after its completion. Coppola told Reggio that he was waiting for a film such as Koyaanisqatsi and that it was "important for people to see", so he added his name into the credits and helped present and distribute the film. Coppola also decided to introduce and end the film with footage of pictographs from the Great Gallery at Horseshoe Canyon in Utah after visiting the site and becoming fascinated by the ancient sandstone murals.
Music
The film's score was composed by Philip Glass and was performed by the Philip Glass Ensemble, conducted by Michael Riesman. One piece written for the film, "Façades", was intended to be played over a montage of scenes from New York's Wall Street. It was ultimately not used in the film; Glass released it as part of his album Glassworks in 1982.
The opening for "The Grid" begins with slow sustained notes on brass instruments. The music builds in speed and dynamics throughout the piece's 21 minutes. When the piece is at its fastest, it is characterized by a synthesizer playing the piece's bass line ostinato.