KOYAANISQUATSI

US, 1982, 85 minutes, Colour.
Directed by Godfrey Reggio.

Koyaanisquatsi is an experimental film by Godfrey Reggio, formerly a Christian Brother working with Indians in Arizona, who set himself the task to communicate something of the need to return to nature and mysticism from the speed and materialism of contemporary living, especially in cities.

The film has no commentary, no words - it is accompanied by a score in the form of a symphony Philip Glass. It is effective and involving music. The director also uses a wide range of photography techniques including time-lapse, slow motion, infra-red photography, aerial photography. The final effect is that of a cinema poem or a cinema essay. The film opens with the mountain and desert scenery and Hopi Indian paintings and moves to the Rockies and then into the inner city.

The word is from the Hopi Indian language and, at the end, several meanings are indicated including: 'life out of balance', 'a state of life that calls for another way of living'.

The film was taken up by Francis Ford Coppola and he promoted it throughout the world. While the film is interesting in its cinematic poetic style, its appeal is very much to those who appreciate sensory images (realistic as well as trance-like) and would not appeal to those who find it hard to concentrate solely on the visual and the sensate.

The cause of the film is worthy - many critics felt that by the early '80s it was somewhat out of date, reflecting the idealistic hopes of the Flower Children of the late '60s and the hopes of the mid-'70s. Some critics even accused it of a kind of elitism in its propounding of its ideals.

The film was well received by many audiences during 1983 - indicating cinema audiences being educated to experimental styles and appreciating the use that can be made of them for communication, insight, propaganda.