Philip Glass - Prophecies (from Koyaanisqatsi)

[Mousetoescamper]

The clip is the final scene from Koyaanisqatsi, a 1982 documentary by Godfrey Reggio. Glass composed the music for the soundtrack.

The film consists primarily of slow motion and time-lapse footage (some of it in reverse) of cities and many natural landscapes across the United States. The visual tone poem contains neither dialogue nor a vocalized narration: its tone is set by the juxtaposition of images and music. Reggio explained the lack of dialogue by stating "it's not for lack of love of the language that these films have no words. It's because, from my point of view, our language is in a state of vast humiliation. It no longer describes the world in which we live." In the Hopi language, the word koyaanisqatsi means "life out of balance".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koyaanisqatsi

[WestMichRad]

1. Terrific movie and soundtrack!

I was fortunate to see the Phillip Glass Ensemble play the soundtrack to the movie while it played on the screen behind them. Glass remarked that it was very difficult to play at a tempo that perfectly aligned with the movie… but they did great.

[dvan]

2. That's awesome. When I was a kid,

my cousins and I would visit our grandparents in the summer. I think it was 1985, I was 10, and my grandma made us all sit and watch this movie. We were totally confused and sort of in shock when it was over. We still talk about it as one of the coolest things we “went through” together.

[Mousetoescamper]

3. A profoundly beautiful and disturbing work of art.

I saw it in a theater more than 40 years ago. The images and music affected my state of being for days. Watching this clip brings back all of those emotions from that first viewing. You must be among a very few to have experienced it with the live ensemble.