Naqoyqatsi – free film screening

Free screening of Naqoyqatsi
Godfrey Reggio’s 2002 film “Life as War”

Drop in and watch Naqoyqatsi, also known as Naqoyqatsi: Life as War, is a 2002 American non-narrative film directed by Godfrey Reggio and the sequel to Reggio’s experimental 1982 film, Koyaanisqatsi. and 1988’s Powaqqatsi. Naqoyqasti is the third and final film in the Qatsi trilogy.

Naqoyqatsi is a Hopi word (written as naqö̀yqatsi in Hopi orthography) meaning “life as war”. In the film’s closing credits, Naqoyqatsi is also translated as “civilized violence” and “a life of killing each other”. A visual montage portrait of our contemporary world dominated by globalized technology and violence.

While Koyaanisqatsi and Powaqqatsi examine modern life in industrial countries and the conflict between encroaching industrialization and traditional ways of life, using slow motion and time-lapse footage of cities and natural landscapes, about eighty percent of Naqoyqatsi uses archive footage and stock images manipulated and processed digitally on non-linear editing (non-sequential) workstations and intercut with specially-produced computer-generated imagery to demonstrate society’s transition from a natural environment to a technology-based one. Reggio described the process as “virtual cinema.”

According to Reggio, the film has no screenplay per se, but three movements (like those of a symphony) with different themes:

1. Numerica.com: Language and place gives way to numerical code and virtual reality.
2. Circus maximus: Competition, winning, records, fame, “fair play” and the love of money are elevated to the prime values of life. Life becomes a game.
3. Rocketship twentieth century: A world that language can no longer describe. The resulting explosive tempo of technology is war and civilized violence.