Powaqqatsi, the follow up is too - they are bundled together for $19.99 at Best Buy (in the USA). Released today, didn't even have it on the shelf yet. I know what I'm doing tonight

Koyaanisqatsi is "life out of balance" - I'm not able to adequately describe the movie, but I can say the first time I saw it I was just floored. If you've seen it, you know what it is - if not, I think you should. Perhaps after I see it again tonight for the first time in many years, I can give a good description of just what the hell I'm talking about. If anyone else feels eloquent, go for it. Here's the official description of it:

KOYAANISQATSI, Reggio's debut as a film director and producer, is the first film of the QATSI trilogy. The title is a Hopi Indian word meaning "life out of balance." Created between 1975 and 1982, the film is an apocalyptic vision of the collision of two different worlds -- urban life and technology versus the environment. The musical score was composed by Philip Glass.
KOYAANISQATSI attempts to reveal the beauty of the beast! We usually perceive our world, our way of living, as beautiful because there is nothing else to perceive. If one lives in this world, the globalized world of high technology, all one can see is one layer of commodity piled upon another. In our world the "original" is the proliferation of the standardized. Copies are copies of copies. There seems to be no ability to see beyond, to see that we have encased ourselves in an artificial environment that has remarkably replaced the original, nature itself. We do not live with nature any longer; we live above it, off of it as it were. Nature has become the resource to keep this artificial or new nature alive.

That being said, my intention in-other-words, let me describe the bigger picture. KOYAANISQATSI is not so much about something, nor does it have a specific meaning or value. KOYAANISQATSI is, after all, an animated object, an object in moving time, the meaning of which is up to the viewer. Art
has no intrinsic meaning. This is its power, its mystery, and hence, its attraction. Art is free. It stimulates the viewer to insert their own meaning, their own value. So while I might have this or that intention in creating this film, I realize fully that any meaning or value KOYAANISQATSI might have comes exclusively from the beholder. The film's role is to provoke, to raise questions that only the audience can answer. This is the highest value of any work of art, not predetermined meaning, but meaning gleaned from the
experience of the encounter. The encounter is my interest, not the meaning. If meaning is the point, then propaganda and advertising is the form. So in the sense of art, the meaning of KOYAANISQATSI is whatever you wish to make of it.

This is its power.

Hey, I remember that one!

I clearly remember falling sound asleep in the theater during that one.

I got to watch it for a video production class in high school. I remember it being rather disturbing.

-Zeke

Disturbing? Wierd. It's basically just running around with a camera, sped up. It goes from a lot of beautiful nature stuff, to man messing it up, then to some of what man does being beautiful, though not all, and ultimately back to nature again. I can't remember anything disturbing though.

There's some incredible stuff in it, clouds moving just under a shot from a mountain top sped up to where you see them wave, a similar one where they go from rough, hit the mountain, and get very smooth spilling over, and my favorite - a person in traffic hits their brakes, and there's a sine wave that pulse back about the next hundred cars of everyone stopping and then going again.

Poor explanation, but super cool movie. Not sure what was disturbing. I didn't fall asleep either, I thought it was pretty incredible footage. To each his own I guess.

Well, if you haven't seen it, and spot it at the rental store, I highly recommend it!

It's basically just running around with a camera, sped up.

That was Blair Witch Project wasn't it?

Don't know, didn't see it. But this is Francis Ford Coppola with Philipo Glass

Actually, I've done a horrible job explaining what the movie is like. Pretend I didn't even try, and simply recommended you give it a shot if you see it at the rental store.

Well, disturbing to a 15 year old kid from a sheltered suburban life. The only scene I distinctly remember is the very long shot of a hot runway with an airplane approaching and coming into view. Other than that I barely remember it. Perhaps it was the whole 'man is evil and destroying the beautiful earth' motif I found disturbing.

-Zeke