The Future of Life:

Trekking Through a Virtual Geography With Godfrey Reggio's Naqoyqatsi

Words: Anthony Kaufman

First, life was "out of balance" (Koyaanisqatsi). Then, it was "in transformation" (Powaqqatsi). Now, we have "war as a way of life." In Naqoyqatsi, the third film in Godfrey Reggio's famous "Qatsi" trilogy, the world as we know it is beyond unbalance and transition, fully evolved into an over-saturated battleground of technological onslaught and civilized violence.

Taking their titles from the Hopi language, the "Qatsi" films -- cinematic poems scored to the hypnotic rhythms of Philip Glass -- offer insights into man's relationship to nature. But in Naqoyqatsi, nature is no more. Replaced by digital code, corporate logos, smiling advertisements and artificial bodies, the contemporary world is reduced to haunting simulation. Yet in creating this doomsday work of technological overload, Reggio and team have inadvertently become digital pioneers: they have made the first totally computer-enhanced documentary feature. "Technology became the medium we had to use in order to question technology," says Reggio, from his Santa Fe home. "It's like using fire on fire."

While Koyaanisqatsi (1983) and Powaqqatsi (1988) used outdoor landscapes, urban sprawl and faraway cultures as their locations, Naqoyqatsi's solitary set is the image itself. "The images become, in effect, the geography of the virtual world," says Reggio. Made up mostly of clips culled from archives, commercials, corporate videos and the rest of society's visual detritus, the film is a collection of bits and pieces that Reggio had been collecting since 1989. After waiting for years to get funded, a March 2000 New York Times article prompted Steven Soderbergh to donate his own money to get the film rolling. (Subsequently, Miramax stepped in to complete financing and distribute; the movie opens in October.) Preproduction started in the fall of 2000, and by February 2001, production began actively in New York.

After the footage was amassed ("at least a million feet," says Reggio) and edited ("I guess our shooting ratio would be 100:1," he adds), every frame was then digitally altered or "reshot." According to Joe Beirne, one of Naqoyqatsi's producers and technical advisers, the project is one 90 minute-long optical effect and used an estimated 3.5 terabytes of data (almost two times the total storage required for Pixar's all-animated Toy Story). From sped-up stock traders, replicated skydivers, saturated soldiers and ghostly citizens on their way to work, the movie sometimes feels like Andy Warhol's silkscreen repetitions of Marilyn Monroe and Campbell's Soup times a million. "We didn't so much shoot this film as create images that are recontextualized from the way you normally see them," explains Reggio. "I didn't want to make a stock and archival film," he continues. "By reanimating or revivifying the images, I wanted to change our familiar world and see it in an unfamiliar way."

Ironically, Reggio, a former Christian monk, doesn't even own a computer. ("I have an analog computer of 72 boxes -- they're about 8 x 10 x 12 -- right in front of me that I can change constantly," he says.) Likening himself to an illiterate person trying to write a book, Reggio relied on a team of young collaborators to realize his vision. "They could take my ideas and wrap them around the tools," he says.