Philip Glass Ensemble: Powaqqatsi

Godfrey Reggio discusses Powaqqatsi: (from Andrew Sternman's discussion with GR in 2024)

Powaqqatsi is the second of the Trilogy, and it’s about the conflict of northern and southern hemispheres. We are eating the southern hemisphere, consuming it. If example is needed, in America, the state of California is the greenest and cleanest of all the states, with the best environmental laws in the nation, yet California alone pollutes more than the entire continent of Africa, altogether.

Powaqqatsi exposes the price we are paying for our happiness, with consumption of resources, the incessant consumption of what should belong to others.

Our language no longer describes our world. We can’t move forward in language, or even image, because these have been corrupted. We need to reboot, t restart, reinvent. Go back to the absolute basics, there are facial expressions, there are the moon and stars in the sky. Like the shamans, who thought of sky, earth, and the roots below, they thought of what grows below, which is why so many medicines used to be roots.

I work from there, in aphoristic terms. That’s why there are no words in the films.

Music and image create a triangle of creativity with the audience.

[Many say the films look new.]

It’s the viewer who has changed, not the films. They seem new, because audiences bring now perspectives to them as they view them. The films are open, they don’t interpret anything for you, they are open.