BIOTECNIKA BLOG

Event Date as Display String:

Sunday, September 22, 2019, 7:00pm - 8:40pm

Location:

Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, 24 Quincy St., Cambridge

URL:

https://harvardfilmarchive.org/calendar/6346

Event Description:

While "Koyaanisqatsi" and "Powaqqatsi' focus on the social,
psychological and spiritual impacts of the evolution of industrial
development over the past two centuries, "Naqoyqatsi" is a reflection
on the immense, ongoing transformation of global experience that has
culminated in the arrival of digital technologies. The grimmest of the
Qatsi films, it was Reggio's attempt "to have the courage to be
hopeless," as he says today. Fittingly, the formative metaphor of the
film is the Tower of Babel, as depicted by Pieter Bruegel the Elder in
one of his 1563 paintings of the biblical story — the opening image of
"Naqoyqatsi." In the story, God sees humanity's quest to maintain
unity and achieve the divine by building a tower to the heavens as a
threat, both to the well-being of the earth's people and to his own
dominance, and he foils their plans, scattering them across the
continents and frustrating their ability to communicate by forcing
them to speak myriad languages. In the world of "Naqoyqatsi," viewers
are lost in the maze of visual "languages" that have arrived with the
panoply of modern technologies dedicated to investigating people,
engaging them in meaningless communication, selling them an endless
supply of products, distracting them with spectacles, and facilitating
their violence against one another. The title's translation — again
revealed only as a conclusion — confirms this: naqoyqatsi means, "1. a
life of killing each other. 2. war as a way of life. 3.
(interpretation) civilized violence." Naqoyqatsi evokes various
dimensions of our ever-more-virtual world by recycling and
refashioning materials from commercial and technological sources.
Within the darkness of this virtual "light," only Philip Glass's
elegant score provides an echo of hope.

UID:

http://uid.trumba.com/event/134365253

Event Start Date as Date Type:

Sunday, September 22, 2019 - 19:00 to 20:40

Thumbnail:

https://www.trumba.com/i/DgACKgbrOMO5xndgCJlxiK4J.jpg

Detail Image:

https://www.trumba.com/i/DgAx1YgGpMAF-%2A5iA8wFFir2.jpg

Feature Image:

Featured:

No

https://www.harvard.edu/preview/featured/events/naqoyqatsi