Koyaanisqatsi: Life out of balance is a documentary film directed by Godfrey Reggio with music composed by minimalist composer Philip Glass and cimatography by Ron Fricke. The film consists mostly of slow motion and time-lapse photography. The documentary contains no narration and relies heavily on music to set the film's tone.

The film is the first in the Qatsi trilogy of films, including the films Powaqqatsi and Naqoyqatsi. The trilogy depicts different aspects of man and technology. Due to copyright issues, the film was out-of-print for over a decade. Glass and his Philip Glass Ensemble have toured with the film, playing the music live in front of the film screen.

Imagery

The film has several cinematic sequences. Each of these sequences has a distinct musical feel, although themes from earlier sections of the score recur frequently throughout. The chapters on the Koyaanisqatsi DVD are separated and named by the titles of the musical sections.

The film's first image of the film is a cave painting depicting several tall darkly-shadowed figures standing near a taller figure adorned with a crown. The next image is a close-up of the Saturn 5 rocket from the Apollo 12 mission during take-off. The film fades into a shot of a desolate desert landscape. From there, it progresses to footage of various natural environmental phenomena such as waves and cloud formations.

The films first shot of man's involvement in the environment is a large mining truck giving off billows of black smoke in the chapter titled "Resource". This is followed by shots of power lines set up in the desert. Man's continued involvement in the environment is depicted with mining operations, overhead shots of power plants, the Hoover Dam and stock footage atomic bombs set off in the Nevada desert.

The sequence entitled "Vessels" contains the films longest single take: a three-minute-thirty-two-second long shot of two United Airlines commercial passenger Boeing 747s being taxied around the runway. "Vessels" also contains shots of traffic patterns and a shot of a large parking lot. This is followed with stock footage of tanks lined up in rows and military aircraft flying over a desert.

The juxtaposition of man and nature is seen again in the chapter "Cloudscape". The stop-motion photography of shadows of clouds are seen moving across the skycrapers in New York City.

The sequence "Pruitt Igoe" contains shots of various housing projects in disrepair, and includes footage of the decay and demolition of the Pruitt-Igoe housing project. The housing project known for its modernist design, but fell into immediate disrepair from misuse of its tenant population. The sequence ends with stock footage of the destruction of large buildings and a shot of a television sets being blown up.

A sequence

"The Grid" is the film's longest sequence, roughly 22 minutes in length. The cimematic theme of this sequence is the speed of modern life. The sequence begins with shots of buildings and a shot of a sunset reflected in the glass of a skyscraper. The sequence is characterized by its use of time lapse photography of the activity of modern life, taking events typically shot at normal speed and speeding them up. The events captured in this sequence involve people interacting with modern technology. The first shots are of traffic patterns as seen from skyscrapers at night. This is followed by the films iconic shot of the moon passing behind a skyscraper. The next shots are a closer shots of cars driving on highway. The sun comes up over the city and we see shots of people hurrying to work. The film shows at regular speed the operation of machines packaging Oscar Meyer bologna. People are shown sorting mail, sewing jeans, manufacturing televisions and doing other jobs with the use of modern technology. A shot of hot dogs being sent down rows of conveyers is followed by a shot of people moving up escalators into a mall. The frenetic speed and pace of the cuts and background music do not slow as shots of modern leisure are shown. People eat, play, shop and work at the same speed. The sequence begins to come full circle as the manufacturing of automobiles in an assembly line factory is shown. More shots of highway traffic are shown, this time in daylight. The film shows the movement of cars, shopping carts, twinkies and television on an assembly line and elevators moving from first person perspective. The film then shows clips from various televison shows being channel surfed shown in fast motion photography. One portion of this sequence shows a man and two different couples reacting to being filmed on the street in slow motion photography. The man is somewhat indifferent to being filmed, but one woman is appears peeved and one man looks confused about being filmed. The sequence now shows cars moving much faster than the speed they were moving before. Both the sequence and the music end with out any resolution cinematic or musical.

"Microchips" juxtaposes pict of microchips and satellite photography of metropolitian cities. The films makes an obvious comparison between the layout of both and their similarities.

"Prophecies" shows various shots of people in from all walks of modern life, from beggars to debutantes.

"Ending" shows a shot of a stock footage of a modified and unmanned Atlas rocket from the Mercury program from the early 1960's. The rocket blows up not long after take off. The footage follows the nose cone of the rocket as it plummets back to earth. The film comes full circle with a shot of a different cave painting, similar to the first, but with no darkly shadowed figures. All of the figures are dressed in different outfits.

Music

The music can be described as minimalist as several themes are repeated frequently. The opening music repeats

"The Grid"'s opening is characterized by 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 an synthesizer playing the piece's bass line obligato.

Meaning

Reggio has said in a short documentary about the film, Essence of Life, that the Qatsi films meant to create an experience and that "it is up for the viewer to take for herself what it is that means." However, the film does question whether, in our haste for technological advancement, humankind have progressed out of balance with nature, each other and our own internal free spirits, with Man now reduced to just a raw material in a non-stop machine. Reggio said in Essence of Life "these films have never been about the effect of technology, of industry on people. It's been that everyone: politics, education, things of the financial structure, the nation state structure, language, the culture, religion, all of that exists within the host of technology. So it's not the effect of it's that everything exists within . It's not that we use technology, we live technology. Technology has become as ubiquitous as the air we breathe.."

The movie has no dialogue but does feature the Hopi word koyaanisqatsi, a concept translated as "life of moral corruption and turmoil" or "life out of balance." "Koyaanisqatsi" is chanted at the beginning and end of the film in a dark, sepulchral basso profundo by singer Albert de Ruiter over a score by Philip Glass. Three Hopi prophecies are sung by a choral ensemble over the film's final few minutes and are translated just prior to the end credits:

• "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."

The film was made over the course of about six years. Three were spent shooting the film. Glass and Reggio spent the other three years with the former composing score to fit the film and the latter recutting the footage to fit the score.

The movie credits Jacques Ellul, Guy Debord and Ivan Illich for its basic inspiration at the end of the film.

History

Out of print for over a decade, Koyaanisqatsi was rereleased on DVD in late 2002. Much of the reason for the film's disappearance from the market centered around a complicated rights and royalties dispute. Reggio's Institute for Regional Education owns the original copyright on the film. The film had originally been licensed and distributed through Island Entertainment/Palm Pictures, which had subsequently been sold to PolyGram - and after the dissolution of PolyGram Pictures, the entire PolyGram film library had been sold to Metro-Goldwyn Mayer. As there had been many accounting departments for these several entities involved, calculations and payments of royalties to the film makers had not been made. IRE brought suit and released an independently-financed DVD production of the film to raise money for the legal costs. MGM and IRE reached an agreement allowing for the current mass-market version through MGM.

Koyaanisqatsi is followed by the sequels Powaqqatsi and Naqoyqatsi and the shorts Anima Mundi and Evidence. Naqoyqatsi was completed after a lengthy delay caused by funding problems and premiered in the United States on October 18, 2002.

In 2000 the United States Library of Congress deemed Koyaanisqatsi "culturally significant" and selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry. In the late 1990's Koyaanisqatsi was one of the first films broadcast via satellite and internet.

The film's cinematographer, Ron Fricke also went on to direct Baraka, a documentary which is often compared to Koyaanisqatsi.

The Philip Glass Ensemble has toured the world, playing the music for Koyaanisqatsi live in front of the movie screen.

Trivia

• The fire in the beginning is the base of a Saturn V rocket from the Apollo program taking off.
• The rocket exploding in the end is a modified and unmanned Atlas rocket from the Mercury-program from the early 1960's. Both are stock footage.
• Footage of the demolition of the Pruitt-Igoe housing complex figures prominently in the film.
• Midway through the film is a quick-motion clip of a car driving down a freeway. This scene depicts portions of the elevated freeway in San Francisco, which included an exit at Embarcadero Center near the Ferry Building that the car carrying the camera takes. Said elevated freeway was torn down after structural damage caused by the 1989 earthquake.
• Roughly an hour and nine minutes into the film, producer Francis Ford Coppola makes a cameo appearance, stepping onto an elevator (from the left side of the frame).
• Francis Ford Coppola did in fact not produce the film. He is credited as presenter of the film according the official website. See also interview with Godfrey Reggio in : "..he would like to do everything possible to make this available to the public, so he put his name on it" (he=Coppola).

Influence

• The chanted koyaanisqatsi lyric was parodied in the P. D. Q. Bach piece Prelude to Einstein on the Fritz, being replaced with the lyric Coy Hotsy-Totsy.
• The Simpsons parodied Koyaanisqatsi in the episode Hello Gutter, Hello Fadder. There is a fast-motion sequence when Homer oversleeps, accompanied by music very similar to that in the film.
• The fast-motion cinematography of Koyaanisqatsi inspired subsequent films and music video, including the Madonna video to Ray of Light, or more directly the Queen and David Bowie music video to Under Pressure, which used some of the same footage of buildings being destroyed. Also, many many commercials over the years have used shots from the film.
• Part of the musical score is used in the UK TV Advertisement for the environmental organisation The Carbon Trust.
• The computer game musician Rob Hubbard unconsciously copied parts of the Koyaanisqatsi score into his music for the Commodore 64 game Delta.
• In season 6 episode 5 of the WB show Gilmore Girls, entitled "We've Got Magic To Do", the character named Kirk does an interpretive dance to the music of Koyaanisqatsi.
• On the Scrubs episode "My New God", the main theme from Koyaanisqatsi is played when the Janitor character is staring down J.D.

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