Koyaanisqatsi and Naqoyqatsi

Koyaanisqatsi and Naqoyqatsi left me both confused and intrigued. I quickly wondered how Godfrey Reggio had come up with the idea of filming the Qatsi trilogy. Was the director just talented at hiding his agenda? Or did he have the ideal of creating art for art’s sake in mind? These questions led me to look up interviews of Reggio in an attempt to understand his motivations.

I found an interview of Godfrey Reggio and Philip Glass on the making of the Qatsi films. The director provides an insight into the purpose he tried to give to his trilogy.

Right away, Godfrey Reggio states: “These films are meant to provoke, they are meant to offer an experience rather than an idea or information or a story about knowable or fictional subject.” The director explains that the viewer has to extract his or her own meaning from the film. The Qatsi documentaries seek not to spark off a particular emotion but rather to allow the spectator to make sense of the images for herself.

Reggio also explains his will to go “beyond words” by his years of meditation in a religious community. He attempted to create an experience that would make the spectator see through the “surface of things”. Godfrey Reggio explains that today, people who live in this world do not see the main event that it hides. He believes the most important event of human history is currently unfolding: the passage from life among nature to life in a “technological milieu”. The director says that we no longer live with technology but are now living in technology. He seeks to make his viewer question his current lifestyle in order to assert this claim. In Koyaanisqatsi, a city is compared to a computer chip; traffic is filmed and accelerated.

When I first viewed Koyaanisqatsi and Naqoyqatsi, I was frustrated in my attempt to understand what Godfrey Reggio sought to show his viewers. This video about the making of the trilogy has answered my question. I found it almost more interesting than the documentaries themselves, perhaps because Reggio’s claims are explicitly expressed. I strongly recommend watching the whole interview if you were confused by the Qatsi films.

Plastic Horizons

In his Plastic Planet, Werner Boote illustrates how plastic products have become essential in our everyday lives despite recent proof of its toxicity. I believed this subject deserved to be treated and I was impatient to see how Boote had addressed it in his documentary.  

At the beginning of his film, W. Boote captivated me as he described the history of plastics and the role they now played in the world trade. These first minutes are practically unmarked by his personal biases and are charged with information. Unfortunately, the director seems to quickly change the structure of his documentary in its second half.

Quickly, Boote depicts all plastic-based products as the burden of society and an overwhelming threat to global health. His narration is characterized by one-sided comments such as “Plastic: the invisible danger.” At the same time, W. Boote only provides short insights of experiments conducted by independent researchers on plastic’s toxicity. In fact, most arguments in Plastic Planet are illustrated superficially. Scenes such as the short shots of a plastic-mummification company leave viewers disappointed and confused.

 

Though he might be facing convincing evidence that proves his theory, I think Werner Boote didn’t make the most convincing choice. I suspect an objective film presenting the tests conducted by both parties would have better supported his claims.

Among the documentaries we have seen so far, Werner Boote's Plastic Planet disappointed me the most. At first I was fascinated by the focus of the film, the importance and potential threats of plastics in our consumer societies. However, Boote’s attitude and his superficial presentation of certain arguments left me disappointed.

  

If you would like to experience another perspective on the affects of plastic waste in the world, I recommend Waste Land. This documentary is an account of visual artist Vik Muniz’s work with pickers in the world’s largest landfill in Brazil. Waste Land brings a humanitarian dimension to Werner Boote’s theme.  

Jesus Camp

Jesus Camp immediately caught my attention and kept me hooked. Once I started watching, it was hard to pause. The first glimpses at Evangelical ceremonies aroused my curiosity. I was surprised to see such young children taking part in intense ceremonies and burst in tears as they react to their pastor’s speech. 

I think I was unconsciously waiting to see a documentary like Jesus Camp. In the last decade, religious extremism and terrorism often have been associated with Islamism, if not the entirety of Islam. Though I knew there were fundamentalists around the world from other religious backgrounds, my assumptions were most likely based on the view given by the press. In retrospect, I saw countless documentaries and news reports on islamist training camps and acts of terrorism before seeing Jesus Camp. During the same time period, I barely heard of other sectarian activity.

Scenes of young children taking part in passionate implorations chocked me. I couldn’t understand how these preteens assimilated the words delivered by their pastor, Becky Fischer. It soon became clear that these children were being manipulated. In an iconic shot, a mother is seen holding her children’s hands and raising them as they pay attention to something. She makes her son and daughter raise their hands after Fischer asks: "Is there anyone here who believes that God can do anything?" I believe this acts truly shows what is being taught to these children. They are being told what to say and how to act. Emphasis is put on implanting ideas in these children’s minds rather then help them interpret biblical writings and preaches their own way.